Designing for Density: Crafting Sustainable and Community-Focused Urban Spaces

Episode Transcript
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Gerard Dombroski (00:12):
Hello and welcome to Design Principles
podcast episode four.
Today we'll be talkingdensification with a very
special guest, Ben.
Do you want to introduce?

Ben Sutherland (00:23):
Guy Marriage.
Yes, welcome, guy, welcome tothe pod.
So, guy, for those of you outthere who don't know Guy, he has
spent about four years forfostering partners over in the
UK one of the largest firmsprobably in the world Seven,
five, sorry seven years atStudio Pacific, one of the

(00:44):
bigger ones in Wellington.
He's been a senior lecturer atVictoria University of
Wellington for over 20 years,founding partner of First Light
Studio and an absolute prolificwriter and author of numerous
books, such as Tall, the Designand Construction of High Rise
Architecture, modern ApartmentDesign a guideline to designing

(01:08):
of modern apartment buildings.
And medium, which is basicallya technical design guide for
creating better medium densityin New Zealand, and the recent
one which is only released lastweek, sustainability and Top
City of Building Materials,which is amazing.

(01:29):
Just quickly welcome to the podGuy.

Sam Brown (01:31):
Just quickly, Guy, you've got a book called Tall
and a book called Medium.
What's the next step?
Are you going low or small?

Guy Marriage (01:37):
No well, somebody said to me that I should be one
on small, but look, I'm anythingbut small, so I'd say they're
going to be large or extra large.

Yeah Well, speaking of extra large, have
you heard that foster partnersare designing a two kilometer
high skyscraper in Saudi Arabia?

I did, yeah, and it just looks like a big
rectangle.
So it hasn't even got anypointy bits, it's just like very
tall.
But it is almost at the edge ofinsanity because I know that
when I was doing some study onthe current tallest building,
which is the Burj Khalifa, theyactually have to do some checks

(02:20):
to make sure that it wasn'tgoing to cause damage to the
Earth's crust beneath it.

So they were worried that such a concentrated
low in one spot.

They thought it might set off earthquakes and
things.
And it actually did set offsome small earthquakes as there
was localized, fractured.

So yeah that's it.
That is mind blowing.
To put things into perspectivetwo kilometers.
The Skytower, the AucklandSkytower, is 328 meters high and
that's like at the very peak.
So this tower is.
Was that six or seven times thesize of the Auckland Skytower?

(02:58):
So imagine that.

A lot of load in that.

That's the lift commute time.
Yeah, that's the thing that'sdensification yeah you probably
don't on something like that.

You probably don't even want to come down from the
building.
You wouldn't commute to it togo up it to work.
You'd probably just live in thebuilding all the time and
travel up and down, because it'dbe a half hour commute up some
of the escalator banks possiblyto get to the floor you want to
go to.
So it's quite a nice high focus, doesn't it yeah?

Yeah, imagine doing the feasibility study for
something like that.
You've got okay.
The top 100 floors are going tobe $330 million.
No, probably more like $100million apartments There'd be no
view.

Sam Brown (03:41):
You'd be so high, you'd just be above the clouds
the whole time.

Yeah, that's awesome, though that's a view,
so there may not be much cloudbut a lot of the time, you would
have no effective view.
You'll just see the curvature.

Sam Brown (03:53):
Yeah, desert haze yeah.

So moving oblivion with a floating skyscope,
that's what unlimited money cando for you, which I suspect is
not a problem that either I norany of your clients have got a
problem with too much money.

Sam Brown (04:11):
No, unfortunately yeah that's good.

All right, let's get into densification.
I guess so.
Does anyone want to give us aquick overview of you know
densification?
Maybe a quick explanation whaturban densification means and
why it's particularly relevantto our cities?

Sam Brown (04:36):
Guys, be expert.
Do you want to take us away?

Well, yeah, sure, I mean.
The thing is, as you probablyknow, we all live in a very
undense country.
New Zealand's actually quiteurbanized.
We've got more proportion ofour society lives in urban
situations than most countries,so we're something like 80%
urbanized.
China is only just over 50%urbanized.

(05:00):
So we think of lots of peopleliving in China and the big
cities, which they do, butthere's still a hell of a lot
more that live out in thecountry.
Our country is largely givenover to sheep and weeds and
cattle.
You know there's nothing muchapart from birds and trees that
live in our country side and allof us, as you probably know,
all of the small towns are goingbust and falling away because

(05:25):
we just don't have an economythat supports that sort of
network of small towns.
So we're a very urban countrybut all that aside, we're
actually a very sparse country.
If you look at the wholecountry, we've got really low
population densities.
So you can't actually look atit from a country point of view
or from a city point of view.
To get a real feel for densityyou need to look at it at a

(05:47):
neighborhood point of view.
So it comes down to and we havesome areas of New Zealand are
sort of normal neighborhooddensities for, compared to other
parts of the world, others areobviously lower, but there are
some parts of some of our bigcities which are getting up
there, so getting to be morereasonable densities.

(06:07):
But even our cities you knowtechnically because you know if
you look at Wellington, ourdensity is really low, even
though we know that there'squite a bit of building.
I'm looking out the window,several ugly apartment buildings
around me but the density isstill quite reasonable because
we've got so much green as well.
So when they're counting thecity limits they're counting all

(06:28):
the green belts and the outertown belt and all those sorts of
things.
So brings statistically.
So you can say anything withstatistics.
But what I'm trying to I guesswhat I've been pushing is that
New Zealand gets up from itsquarter acre mentality.
So one house per quarter acre,which gives you, gives you a
density of about 10 houses perhectare to 10 dwelling units per

(06:53):
hectare, which is statisticallyreally low.
So what we should be aiming foris probably something in the
150 to 200 to 300 dwelling unitsper hectare.
And there are cities overseaswhere their figures are in the
thousands.
So places like Hong Kong wouldbe sort of 3000 or higher, and

(07:16):
in parts of the world there'ssome really density located in
the multiple thousands perhectare, so where they have many
, many people, household units,living together.
So we need to get more used toliving closer together, but it
still doesn't mean that we'regoing to be crowded by any means
.

Sam Brown (07:32):
They're giving up with a quarter acre dream things
, probably one of the biggestclinch points when you think,
guy, I mean, where's Kiwi still?
Hold on to that?
And actually before you jumpedon the conversation, we were
talking about it with Ben and hewas saying that a lot of the
developers that he works withworks with considering a lot of
the purchases as well,considering resale and with that

(07:52):
sort of seeing medium density.
Is that stepping stone, thatmiddle ground, that one or two
year ownership before they moveon to that quarter acre dream.
So that still seems to be thatend goal for a lot of New
Zealanders.

Yeah, and I'm not really sure why, because most
people around the world don'thave a quarter of an acre.
It's a very unusual sort ofthing to have and actually it's
a pain in the neck.
I'm not sure how many of youguys live in a place where you
have to mow the lawns.
Tell you what I hate.
I just play some of thechildren I haven't yet trained
them to mow the lawns, becausethey're actually toddlers.

Sam Brown (08:27):
It's the admin right.
So all the maintenance, yeah,you just don't have the time.

There's a lot of maintenance and that's the great
thing with my apartment thatI've had for the last 20 years
Haven't done an ounce ofmaintenance on the outside of it
.
Don't have to.
You know, it's weatherproof,it's it doesn't leak, has no
maintenance.
I don't need to repaint it.
I just live there and that'sfine.
If I want to go away for theweekend, I shut the door, that's
it.
You know, don't need to lockanything up, turn anything off,

(08:51):
just.
It's a very simple lifestyleand I think gradually, people
are realizing that they too canhave a simpler lifestyle and
less spending every weekend athome mowing the lawns, doing the
, mowing the hedges, doing theverge on the, on the berm at the
front, all those sorts ofthings.

Yeah, I'm, I'm definitely on the fence with
with this because I 100% agreewith you.
Like most of the time, atconvenience wise, it's so much
easier just to have, you know,even just a townhouse situation
where it's something that youcan just close the door and walk
away.
But at the same time, growingup on a farm, I'm just like, oh,

(09:30):
wouldn't it be good to havesome space for some backyard
cricket and some massivevegetable gardens?
We can be self sustainable and,I don't know, live the Kiwi
dream, I guess.

The backyard cricket?
Is that because you havechildren or you want to have
children?

That's just because you know summertime.
Yeah, that's true.
I've got friends though I havegot friends, you can invite them
round for a barbecue.
Barbecue is such a huge part ofthe Kiwi culture.

I have a barbecue on my back.

I have a barbecue there.

Sam Brown (10:07):
That's an interesting point you make though, ben,
because I think what you're kindof referring to is that the
social aspect of the quarteracre house, whether that be with
neighbors, friends or your ownfamily do you reckon that
traditionally medium density oreven high density apartment
living in New Zealand hasn't hadthat amenity associated with it

(10:28):
, and so people sort of havecreated this negative view of
those sort of developments?

Yeah, that's the trick really is how to bring
those medium, those quarter acrefeatures into a high density
environment.
And maybe we don't need them,maybe not every place needs them
, but I'd say especially formore of a medium density design.
A lot of people are after thesame features, I guess, but at a

(10:59):
smaller scale.

Yeah, I mean I think that what New Zealand
seems to have leapt into.
We've gone from having quarterof an acre of land and a house
on it and then we've said, okay,and now we can go into tiny,
tiny apartments and there's alot in between.
We don't have to go from thatto that.
There's all this stuff in hereand those are the options.

(11:21):
I mean, one of the first sortof apartment buildings that went
up in Wellington in recenttimes in about 2000, I think was
what's known as the Galleria onTori, I think, designed by
Arkhouse Architects, and thatwas marketed.
I remember at the time theymarketed it as something like

(11:42):
have your quarter acre sectionin the city and because they had
big front yards and big I don'tknow if they had backyards, but
they almost had like a picketfence up the front, so it gave
the impression of being suburbiain the city two stories up.
I'll leave you to figure outwhether you think that was a
good idea or not.

Sam Brown (12:04):
Anyone seen this building?
It's interesting, to say theleast.

Yeah, but then I look out the window what I've
got out the window which arealso designed by Arkhouse.
A lot of the apartmentbuildings in Wellington have
been designed by this one firm,but they've gone for what could
euphemistically be called theAsian student market.
In other words, there's amentality that perhaps students,

(12:29):
and perhaps especially studentsfrom overseas that may not know
about the quarter acre, lustingthat they may be amenable to
accepting a smaller living space, and to me that's a problem.
It does a disservice to ourimmigrant families, it does a
disservice to students.
The only thing it does do isthat it produces a very small
apartment in theory for not muchmoney, but actually they're

(12:51):
paying really high rents, Ithink proportionately for the
square meter of space they'vegot.
And again I would say there's alot of space in the middle in
which we could explore.

Yeah, that whole space in the middle, that
medium density.
I guess would it be fair to saythat it's kind of crazy, but I
guess medium density isrelatively new to New Zealand.

Absolutely totally new.
There's been a couple ofapartments, apartment buildings
both in Wellington and Aucklandwhich were built about 1920 or
so.
So there's Courtville inAuckland, which is very well
designed, very desirable evennow.
It was desirable 100 years ago,still desirable now Mayfair

(13:41):
apartments in Parnell and downhere in Wellington there's a
couple, but not very many, ofapartment buildings that have
been well designed, that aresought after.
But then the attitude was from alot of people in, I guess, in
officialdom but also justgenerally the people is that
they didn't want to haveapartments because apartments

(14:02):
were bad.
And I go into that in this bookhere on modern apartment design
.
So there's a chapter in here byAmina Petrovich which comes
from her thesis that she did,which was all about the history
of the apartment building, andso there's a lot of discussion
as to whether apartments are agood thing or a bad thing.

(14:24):
I mean, they originated inItaly and France and what they
had in those days they weredesigned around multi-family use
, so one family would live in abuilding and so you'd have a
whole lot of rooms and peoplewould live in different rooms on
different floors.
And it's interesting how we'renow coming back to that in a way

(14:44):
, and a lot of people are sayingwe need to have
multi-generational living andthat's what was designed and
intended a couple of hundred or500 years ago.

Sam Brown (14:56):
We've been talking about apartments.
It would just be interestingfor listeners, by
differentiating what anapartment is versus what we're
thinking or what we'rereferencing as medium density.
Is there an easy particularlyfor the layperson is there sort
of like an easy metric that wecan refer to?

Yeah.
So brands did a whole lot ofresearch into this and in the
end they said look, what theyfound out is that of the
different government departments, each government department had
their own definition of whatmedium density was.
So some of them were about area, some were about height, some

(15:33):
of them were about the number ofunits in a building etc.
So what they said is mediumdensity is anything any
multi-unit dwelling up to sixstories.
And they said that's mediumdensity.
But so that includes threecategories.
So one category is one to twostory townhouses, the next
category is two to three storytownhouses and the next category

(15:56):
is sort of three to six storiesin apartments.
So they're sort of within that.
But so all of those in theoryare medium density.
It's only when you really startto get to people living
vertically above each other thatyou get more density.
That really happens.
So the first one, where youjust have townhouses, it just
means you're missing out theside yards.
You might still have a littlebit of backyard or front yard,

(16:18):
so it pushes up the density alittle bit.
It might double the densityfrom what you had, might get up
to 30 drilling units per hectare, but then if you go to
apartment buildings.
You can really start to get upthere.
So my apartment building that Ilive in is about, I think about
150 drilling units per hectare.

Sam Brown (16:37):
Which is what you were saying, is sort of the
optimum number that we need totry and.

Yeah, of course, I designed the perfect apartment
building which I live in.

Naturally.

Going back to that change in medium density is
sort of becoming more of athing now.
Why is that the case?
Is it sort of like anenvironmental thing?
Is it more of like a housingaffordability thing or a
community thing?
What is that shift that is kindof swaying it more to medium

(17:09):
density or high densificationnow than in the past.

I think a big part of it is the price of land.
So if you look back in the 1950sand 60s, then land was really
cheap when people came back fromthe war, from fighting over
there.
And land was cheap in the 50sso you could buy a section for I
think trying to remember whatmy parents paid, but it was

(17:34):
something like 50 pounds orsomething ridiculous like that
and then build a house for 300pounds on the piece of land.
But you know, so you gave thatphenomenon of the really cheap
land.
Now that also meant, obviously,that somebody was doing the
developing of the land, soputting in the infrastructure
systems, the roads, the pipesand things, and on those days

(17:54):
you just you'd have a developer,I think, divide up the land and
put that in, and then thecouncil would come along and put
in the infrastructure.
Now, as we all know, ourinfrastructure has reached the
end of its life in many cities,especially in Wellington, and so
there's a huge bill involved inredoing the infrastructure in
all of these places and nobodywants to pay for the
infrastructure anymore.

(18:14):
That's what when you developsomething.
That's what your developmentfee goes to Contribution fees
yeah nobody wants to do that.
But so now, typically if we havea site, then the site might
cost half the total cost,instead of just being a tenth of
the cost of the house.
It might cost half.
So that means because the landcost is so much, you need to use

(18:36):
less land.
So we're compacting down, andalso because as cities grow they
get further and further out.
So you know, and the outerreaches where people are trying
to build way out here on theperimeter, it means there's a
long way to travel in and outand all the water and sewage
needs to go in and out.
So there's a huge amount ofinfrastructure.
So by building things morecompact, we actually have a

(18:56):
better running system.
But the problem that we have atthe moment is we're starting to
densify on the outer edge of thecities.
So, for instance, in Wellingtonthere's not that much
densification happening in theinner city, but there's a huge
amount happening in Upper Hut,which is not really what the
densification did happen,Because you're still going to

(19:16):
jump in their cars.
There might have many morepeople living out there.
There's not enough publictransport, so they're going to
jump in their cars and driveinto town to try and find a park
here where there are no parks,so when you're talking about
yeah.

I've done that drive.

Sam Brown (19:28):
It's fun so when you're talking about
infrastructure upgrades, we'renot just talking about the well
documented issues with pipes,particularly in Wellington, but
we're talking transport, we'retalking green spaces, we're
talking like amenity schools,all that sort of thing as well.

Absolutely.
Yeah, it doesn't cost that muchmore to double the size of a
school because you can just addin more prefabs, but to produce
a whole new school and thenbuild up the cost of that, it's
proportionally.
It costs a lot more to do that.
But of course they'll be doingthat on green space land which
is very cheap.
So they'll be building a schoolmiles from anywhere perhaps,

(20:05):
you know, or on the edge of townwhere the land is cheap and
where the kids can run around.
I mean, interestingly, when Ilived in London sorry, I'm going
to probably huck on about thatquite a lot, but when I lived in
London, lived in Central Soho,and there was a school near me
and the next to the entrance wasbetween the local church and
Anne's and the local brothelowned by the Porn King, and

(20:29):
there's a doorway in betweenwhich said it's an Anne's school
.
So this doorway, just thestandard sort of 900 wide
doorways where all the kids wentin to play inside the school.
And if they had a playground Ithink it might have been up on
the roof, but they had a fenceoff but possibly on the roof
where they could play handballand stuff like that.
So you know, there's not enoughroom right in the middle of the

(20:51):
city to do big things likeschools.

Yeah, that's crazy.
You get quite a nice,interesting city.
Was that overlapping of historyand yeah, I love it.

I mean a lot of people would say you know you
can't bring your your childrenup in an urban situation and
that's complete rubbish.
You know there were generationsand generations of kids who
were really good, well sortedkids, very street wise.
Obviously you know they knewwho the hookers were and who the
bad guys were and who thepolicemen were, and they, you

(21:23):
know you can't pull the woolover the eyes of a Londoner, you
know because they've grown upwith this sort of stuff.
So there's a definite advantageto being street wise and being
brought up in that sort of area.
But the one thing they didn'thave was room to run around on a
green field outside and kick aball.
So none of them are going tobecome footballers or play rugby
, but that's not the mostimportant thing in the world.

Absolutely, I guess it's quite there's, with
the whole densification thing.
There is that huge scale ofcity and out of town, like the
one to two dwelling to three tosix, right up to apartment, like
it's such a huge conversation.
Yeah, I guess appropriateapproaches in particular parts

(22:08):
of town.

Yeah, it is a big conversation and I think that I
think that we we have a lot ofpeople talking in it who don't
necessarily know what they'retalking about and they don't
live the talk.
So I would say that probablymost people who are designing
multi unit housings in NewZealand they're probably not

(22:29):
living in multi unit housing, sothey don't actually they're not
really standing up to what theyare saying.
If you're designing somethingfor somebody, you should design
something and be happy to livein it yourself.
So the apartment building thatI worked on, that I live in, we
designed 29 apartments whichwere all really nice to live in,

(22:50):
and so there's a range ofdifferent sizes of them, and
it's been a very popularbuilding ever since it was made
because of that, as opposed tothe ones nearby which have got
really small, ugly, awkward,uncomfortable apartments in some
cases, and so they're not asnot as popular.
They may be popular becausethey're cheap, but they're cheap

(23:12):
because they're tiny.

Sam Brown (23:14):
So it's interesting that.
It's interesting that point youmade there, guy, about
designing something that you'dbe happy to live in yourself.
I think that's almost like thebasic basic course for any
designer, right?
Like why would you designsomething, regardless of what a
client's brief is, that you'renot happy with at the end of the
day?

Yeah, well, that's what I think.

Yeah, for money.

unfortunately, but also there's a sort of
perception in perhaps in NewZealand that multi unit, medium
density housing is is onlysuitable for poor people, or
only suitable for poor people,or only suitable for squashing
students in, or only suitablefor people that don't deserve to
have better.
And again, I think that that'swrong because, again, if you

(23:59):
look at the work being doneoverseas, you know most people
in London, nearly all people inLondon possibly, live in medium
density, multi unit housing andthe most expensive, most
expensive houses are all aroundKensington and things, and
there's a huge amount inKensington where you know the

(24:21):
five stories high I mean, Ilived in there for a while as
well and so there's 10 or 10,perhaps 10 different households
in the one building which isonly five meters wide or six
meters wide, and so you've got awhole lot of people living in
this one building and those arethe most expensive dwellings in
London, apart from the,obviously, the palaces and

(24:43):
things like that for the ultrarich.

That's really interesting.
So, in your opinion, what doesmake good medium density
architecture?
Is it just like you know aboutthe design, the layout, the
functionality?
Or, yeah, what is it?
What's the crux of it?

I think there's more to it than that.
So I think that you've got tohave something that's amenable,
got to have something thatreally works for people, and you
have to have something that isgenerous and not mean spirited,
but at the same time, you needto have something which is built
well in terms of the standardsthat it's built to.
So one of the most importantthings that you can have is to

(25:23):
make sure that a building issoundproof, because what you do
not want to hear is yourneighbors.

You don't want to hear them above you walking
around.

You don't want to hear them next door to you
farting.
You don't want to hear thembelow you with their base
speakers you know playing somemusic at two in the morning.
You don't want to hear yourneighbors at all.
You might like your neighbors,you never want to hear from your
neighbors at all.

We'll see them, I guess.
So I guess privacy is a hugeone as well, isn't it?

Privacy is a huge one, and the other one that goes
with that, of course, isfireproof.
You need to have some reallygood inter-tenancy walls to
withstand sound and fire, butalso inter-tenancy floors to
withstand sound and fire, sothose are really important
basics.
So I love my apartment becauseI never hear anybody, except for
one person, which we might talkabout later.

And the gigantic construction site across the
road.

Oh, there is that yes.

Sam Brown (26:13):
We covered this often conversation a couple of
podcasts ago about the grouphome builds and what we
challenge there is whether theactual building regulatory
framework New Zealand buildingregulatory frameworks good
enough to raise the quality ofthat sort of group home or that
entry level housing area You'retalking about.
You know two aspects here, guyfire and acoustics.

(26:35):
Do you think that the buildingcode is sufficient in addressing
those or is there somethingthat we need to consider a
little bit more there?

We certainly need to consider it more.
I mean, one of the things thatyou have to remember is that the
building code sets out the veryminimum that you're allowed to
build to.
So when people develop a say,you know, we've built this to
the building code, it's likeyour big bloody deal, mate, you
know, if you don't build it tothe building code, you should be
in jail, yeah.
So when you build it to thebuilding code, that should be

(27:05):
the minimum standard that you'reaiming for.
So that's what we tried to do.
In this book, medium, which isall about and it's got the
central pages which are coloredblue you can see a whole bunch
of different solutions and oneof the things we note there is
the as much as we could, wherethe manufacturers gave us the
information was what is the firerating and what is the acoustic

(27:26):
rating of your system.
So you know we get some systemsmight just improve two decibels
on what's in the code, or theymight improve 10 decibels on
what's in the code.
If they improved 25 decibels,then there's a vast amount of
improvement over the standard.
And you know, one of my firstjobs I did when I was back in

(27:48):
New Zealand was a project wherewe were, or I was just somebody
else had designed it.
I was just running it on site.
But the afterwards one of thepeople involved one of the
ladies.
She rang us up and she said Ithink my apartment is haunted.
Well, like what do you mean?
Well, I can hear footsteps inmy apartment when there's nobody

(28:11):
in my apartment.
And she freaked out one nightwhen she thought that her
boyfriend was coming home.
She could hear the lock in thedoor opened up.
She had footsteps down thekitchen and then going to come
around into the bedroom and shelooked and there was nobody
there.
And of course it was herneighbor, because the noise was
traveling straight under thewall, because they had to score
the bottom of the wall and itwas concrete so that all the

(28:32):
sounds were telegraphic through,and so she could hear
everything in the neighboringapartment as clearly as she
could in her own apartment.
It wasn't actually haunted, butit was beveled by really bad
construction, sadly, which I wastoo late to the party to do
anything about.
But so you know, I love thefact that in my apartment I
can't hear where my neighborscome or go.

(28:53):
I do have this one curiousquirk, though, that for a while
I had a neighbor who was thesecond trombonist in the New
Zealand Symphony Orchestra,which is a fantastic thing, of
course.
Michael, hello Michael, if youever see this.
Michael did have a habit afteran NZSO concert, you'd come home
and have a few friends aroundand then you play on the

(29:13):
trombone and that comes throughthe wall at two in the morning,
clearly.

Sam Brown (29:19):
I figured trombone sounds probably not something
that we designed to thatregularly.

You could hear it clear as a bell and you know I
could yell at the top of myvoice.
Shut up, of course he couldn'thear me.

I heard you, he just didn't care.

Sam Brown (29:36):
There's kind of two points that you've touched on,
guy.
I just want to just kind ofreturn to them.
One, it's that building to theminimum standard thing, and then
the other thing was likepushing this medium density
housing to the out of fringes ofcities and not putting it in
the center.
Do you think that has an impactor do you think that's
influencing that publicperception that you mentioned

(29:56):
about medium density being forthat lower socio economic group?

Well, yeah, it probably does.
I mean it's.
It's interesting because youknow there are in Wellington,
and certainly in Auckland aswell, there are some rich people
that live in medium densityhousing and down a winyard
quarter in Auckland there's alot of medium density housing
going up there, some of it quitenice.
In Wellington there's a lot ofmedium density stuff which is

(30:22):
happening in places, perhapsalong the waterfront, but all
the stuff back from thewaterfront is perceived as being
not as nice and it doesn't havethe view or the sunshine and
things, and so therefore, ifit's not as nice, there seems to
be this attitude that thereforeit can be as shit as you want,
and that's where I disagree.
It should be good quality, goodshould be the basic quality,

(30:44):
and then we go from good tobetter to excellent, but we
should never go less than good.
There's no point buildinganything which is not good.

Sam Brown (30:53):
How do you get this, you know, these thoughts or this
approach in front of developers?
Because we as architectsobviously can provide.
You know, our desire is toprovide the best that we
possibly can in the builtenvironment, but often we're
constrained or confined by whatour brief is and what our
clients' pockets, our deeperclients' pockets are and things

(31:14):
like that.
I mean, how do we change thatsort of client level, that top
tier developer level, so thatfilters down to, you know,
ultimately the end user?

Yeah.
So that's one thing that's sortof interesting in Britain,
because a lot of the housingover there is built as public
housing, so they call it, Iguess, council housing, which it
would have been, and there areboth some terrible examples of
that, but also some quite goodexamples of that.
But what they're all working tois a common space standard.
So this was done from a 1961report called, which is known as

(31:47):
the Park Morris Report, whichyou may have read, I'm not sure,
also known from a book,something like Our Lives, our
Homes or something.
But it was written and he saidlook, these are the minimum
standards, size standards, thisis how big the smallest living
room should be, this is how bigthe smallest bedroom should be,
this is how big the kitchenneeds to be and all this sort of
thing.
So they set out these minimumstandards and that's what the

(32:11):
British worked to.
Ironically, the British systemis the smallest, the smallest
sizes in Europe.
So most European countries havegot bigger sizes.
New Zealand doesn't have anysizes at all.
So we've sort of said make itup, go for your life, I don't
care what you build.
So it's permissible to buildsome really small, shitty
buildings here in New Zealandwhich we're not allowed to build

(32:33):
in other cities, in othercountries.
So in America there's no rulesas well.
You can build what you like inAmerica, but in New Zealand
we've said, yeah, we don't mindwhat you build, which means that
you do get some builds whichhave got apartments which are
less than the legal minimum.
So they've got through it bybeing clever or being stupid.
But so you have theseapartments which are 20 square
meters, which should be bannedin New Zealand, and yet by some

(32:57):
clever jiggery, pokery with thefront door key, you can say it's
all part of a dual keyapartment and that people can
live there.
And actually it's reallyhorrible.
Their apartments are about thesize of this room that I'm in,
which, as you can see, is alittle crown full of stuff, and
if you imagine somebody's livingin that apartment the entire
day for the rest of their lives,which includes a kitchen and a

(33:21):
toilet and things like that, itgets very, very crowned and
there's just no need for that.
The government needs to haveballs and say, no, this is the
minimum, and we mean that's theminimum.
You need to be building thissize or bigger, and if
developers are faced with that,then they will build to those
sizes or bigger.
But if developers are allowedto build smaller, they will
build smaller because they knowthat they can sell it, because

(33:41):
people are desperate.

Yeah, there's certainly some good developers
that work hard to have a niceoutcome, but what?

are you?

talking about.

Can you name any good developers?

I think, all right, we'll run through some
good options.
I live in the Peter Bevin onTinnacore Thorne News.
That's fantastic, beautiful,yeah, absolutely amazing, like
it's got density, but then it'san intriguing set of spaces and
you kind of wind through it likesort of like a little courtyard

(34:28):
streetscape-y.
There's little pockets ofinterest where people could hang
out.

You're a very lucky man that you can live
there.
It's great, it's a greatdevelopment there.

It's very cold in winter.
Our particular one doesn't geta huge amount of sun and we're
up against that hill, so yeah,but the development itself is
amazing.
And then I think Jill Parsonson Pyrrhe Street, I think, is a
beautiful example, so must havehad a pretty awesome developer
to pull that off.
I think that's an amazingexample of densification and

(34:59):
like maintaining the integrity,I think, of the character.

Yeah, absolutely, and I mean that's an interesting
one.
You probably know about it, butthe Geds building in Pyrrhe
Street, known as what's it knownas the Zed, I can't remember it
.
It'll come, sam's going toGoogle it and find out what it
is.
But that was an interesting onebecause there was one house on
a Cotoraker section there, orpossibly even smaller, and they

(35:28):
said that they wanted toredevelop it and put eight units
there and the council said youcan't put eight units.
That's shocking.
And Victoria ResidentsAssociation said no way, that'll
be awful, be awful.
And Gerald Parsonson persevered.
He was doing it for the clientswhose name was.

(35:48):
Can you tell us?

Sam Brown (35:49):
Zavos, zavos pardon me, zavos Corner is the name of
the development.

Yeah, so Zavos, referencing the Greeks and the
clients with Greek.
I can't remember if theirsurname was Zavos or not, but
yeah, so they persevered and inthe end they got permission to
build eight units on that siteand an underground carpark, and
it is by far the bestdevelopment in Wellington.

(36:14):
It's fantastic.
And now the council takes alltheir overseas visitors there
and to show it off and say look,how several our Wellington
architects are.
They're the goods on like this.
What they don't mention is thatthey fought tooth and aliens
for years.
So yeah, it's ironic.

I think Park Muse as well.

Yeah, Park Muse by Roger Walker.

Brilliant project.

It is yeah.

And then F Fields, one at the top of up
past the embassy or Sat Street.

Oh yeah, Madri.

Banks.
Oh yeah, yeah, madri Banks.
So there's definitely likeawesome examples.
Something that reallyfrustrates me about the sort of
newer multi unit stuff is thecopy paste, and I think you lose
that intrigue of spaces andlike ownership of space, so like

(37:06):
you've got minus.
The one was the add some morequirks in there and yeah, I
think, yeah, we don't build inNew Zealand everything in a
factory, so, like the thought ofI will build all the same to
make life easier, probably makesthe drawing side and
predictability of what the laboris a building easier.

(37:28):
But I think in the grand schemeof things, man, a little bit of
variation would be a lot better.

It's been both things in a factory, doesn't it?

Sam Brown (37:36):
No, you can use it.

I built more things in a factory.

I just want to jump in there for us to get in,
gerard, because I kind of seeboth sides.
Basically, from myunderstanding, it's more around
like resource consent is thereason that makes pushes people
to build replications of thesame thing, as opposed to

(38:00):
designing something more like.
What was it called?

Sam Brown (38:03):
Zalos Corner.

Yeah, and the reason is because you know, as
soon as you get sort of sharedspaces or shared roof or
anything that overlaps, youstart to need a body corp, and
developers are just trying toavoid body corps at all costs,
because obviously the end userdoesn't really want a body corp
if they don't need to.
So the resource consent doesn'treally fit that mold quite well

(38:29):
, and so it kind of stares youinto one direction,
unfortunately, from my opinion.

Does that just mean you have to have a clean
roof?
You do need a clean roof.

You need to be able to everything within your.
The compound of your certainbuilding needs to be yours and
not affect your neighbor at all.
Otherwise you need a body corp.
It's seen as one big buildingas opposed to.
You know you can't freeholdyour section.
You have to have it acrosslease situation, at the very

(39:01):
least.

There's certainly design answers in
there, though I don't think it'sfully restrictive.

Definitely.

I think just repetition is easier and people
don't want to pay perhaps morearchitecture fees for a more
complex design process.

Yeah, definitely .
I think the resource consentprocess is far too tick poxy,
though, and so when you'retrying to put it in it like for
me, it's my experience of it sofar as just being where projects
go to die, there's so many jobsin resource consent at the
moment it's crazy, and that it'sjust a tick boxing situation,

(39:40):
and if you're not kind ofticking all those boxes, then
it's pretty hard to get through,unfortunately.

Yeah, one of the chapters in this book was by one
of my colleagues here at theSchool of Architecture, hannah
Hopewell, and she's a wonderful,really, really interesting
person and she's written thischapter which is called
Community and, as she argues,the most important thing about
designing for a medium densitysituation is to actually think

(40:13):
about the community first.
So think about the community ofpeople that you're going to be
creating and design the spacesor allow for the spaces around
which you can arrange the housesthat later they will be
inhabiting, and fulfilling thatcommunity.
So she has things which shetalks about like spaces of
primary circulation.
You need to think about theprimary circulation routes,

(40:35):
spaces of shared utility, spacesof primary recreation and
sociality and so all of thosesorts of things, and there's a
lovely one spaces of primaryrepose.
So where are you going to be?
So like, if there's, as shesays, it may be that the site
has a tree where a bird singsevery morning, or on a bench
could be put underneath it soyou could sit there and listen

(40:57):
to the bird, or particularlypart of the site that gets
lovely light in the lateafternoon or early morning.
So you need to think aboutthese really subtle gestures
which can actually really make asite, and so that you're
probably getting that up atJed's place on the on Tinnacori,
where you get some reallylovely spaces in that central

(41:17):
courtyard.
You're certainly getting themon Roger Walker's thing, park
Muse, where there's some reallyinteresting spaces in between
the buildings there, and that'sso different from plonking a
tower and making it as high aspossible or twice as high as
you're legally allowed to andjust going up and up, because

(41:37):
that just doesn't help anybody.

Sam Brown (41:39):
I mean the key thing there's stakeholder involvement
right and it's, and it'sstakeholder involvement before
the design process evencommences you know, if you're
designing something and thenputting it out to the public and
being like I hope you like itHalf the time they don't.
It would not be a betterobjective for designers which I
don't think we do enough asgetting people in the door just

(42:00):
the general public to givefeedback on proposed development
before you've even put pen topaper.
I mean that would be aninteresting way of tackling
things.

Well, it would.
But part of the problem withobviously, if you're designing
for a client, then you just talkto them, but when you're
designing for a group of peoplein the future who may or may not
buy them, it's impossible toknow really who the client is.
So, in a way, you have todesign for this faceless,
shapeless client that may.
But when you're doing that,like if you design something

(42:32):
which is full of one bedroomapartments, then you can
virtually guarantee that all ofyour clients are going to be the
same, because they're all goingto be in the situation.
They're all going to be singlepeople or perhaps a couple, but
you're not going to get anybodywith children in a one bedroom
apartment.
You're not going to get any oldpeople, retirees, in a one
bedroom apartment.
So you define what the peopleare.

(42:55):
So that's why people aredesigning student apartments.
That means horrible singleunits that aren't big enough to
have a friend around.
And so if you can actuallythink about what sort of people
would we like to have livinghere?
It's like, well, if we want tosay, look, I'd like to have some
families living here with threechildren or four children each,

(43:15):
then you have to designbuildings that have got room to
have three or four childrenstaying there.

Yeah, we don't want those students to have too
much room.
All they do is have parties allthe time.
They don't spend any time atuniversity doing the work.

That's right.
One of the metrics that I cameup with which I had hoped would
have been widely adopted by nowbut sadly doesn't appear to have
been, is the metric I think Icalled it the feline metric.
So there's the old expressionis not big enough for room to
swing a cat.
So if you think average armslength and if you add average

(43:56):
cat to the end of that, that's acircle of about 2.7 meters in
diameter.
So if you're swinging a cataround, you need to have 2.7
meter, depending on the breed ofcats.

Yeah, if you have a bigger cat, then you need
it.

That's a minimum size I say for any room.
You should be able to get acircle 2.7 meters in there to
swing a cat.

So what do you call that?
What do you call that?
Sorry there.

Sam Brown (44:23):
The feline.
Metric the feline metric.

Oh, that's good.

Sam Brown (44:27):
We've talked a lot about the social and urban sort
of impacts of these sort ofdevelopments.
I'd be interested to just kindof get your take, guy and others
on sort of the sustainabilityor the sustainable side of
medium density.
Obviously you know you likeusing less land is more
sustainable, but is there anyother key aspects that you can

(44:49):
identify?

Well, if you build those places centrally then you
don't need to have carparks.
So some of the buildings nearbydon't have any carparks.
Our building, the ground floor,had already been converted and
mainly concreted for stiffness,so we couldn't really have
anything on the ground floor.
So we actually do have carparks, but while 20 years ago people

(45:12):
would use all the carparks allthe time, now there's several
other carparks which are justsitting there empty because the
people who are in the apartmentsactually don't have a car,
don't need a carpark.
I use mine mainly for storage.
I do have a car so I can getaway every now and then, but
mostly the carpark just sitsthere sort of unused most of the
week.
So, deleting the fact that 29apartments with the possible 50

(45:35):
people in the building or more,there are very few use of cars
within that.
So most people in our buildingjust walk to work or take a
scooter or take the bus.

Sam Brown (45:44):
You'd have to argue that you, that transport
infrastructure, needs to be onpar to support that as well,
though, and I feel like that'snot the case in a lot of places,
particularly New Zealand.

Yeah, so for instance, if you built, yeah
you're putting that out in UpperHut, yeah.

And you've got some lemon keg.

They're working on it, yeah they're working on it,
but if you go to the apartmentbuildings that are going up in
Upper Hut, there's a huge amountof cars on the streets nearby.
So one of the things that madeit more affordable was the
Wellington Council saying youdon't need to have any, you
don't need to provide anycarparks, and providing carparks

(46:22):
is one of the major reasons whythings are so expensive.
There's actually a book whichI'm reading at the moment, which
I don't think I have here,which is called the High Cost of
Free Parking.
Basically, it's a number ofyears of study in America where
they're saying that if youprovide free parking, then it
pushes up your land cost orpushes up the amount that you

(46:43):
need to spend on your site, andso it pushes up the cost of the
sale of the unit to somebody inthe end.
So all of these sorts of things.
So parking is a major part ofit, and if we can reduce the
amount of people driving, and sothat's why the argument is that
we should be building centrallyrather than building out of the
hut.

Sam Brown (47:00):
Yeah, I guess there's actually just on that point,
guy, there's a really good 99%invisible podcast that
summarizes that exact topic thatyou're talking about.
So if listeners like podcasts,do you have to check out?
What about materiality andsustainability of materiality
and medium density?
I guess often you're sharingwalls and therefore there's less

(47:22):
external cladding and thingslike that.
Surely there's sustainable sortof positives in developing
medium density houses.

Absolutely yeah, and one of the key ones, I guess
, is heating and cooling.
So I have no side walls, I haveno skylights.
I have got people on five, foursides to me.
There's nobody at the back.
There's a corridor at the back,so the only sunlight and
daylight that I get is from thenorth.
So my apartment needs noheating.

(47:52):
It's never had any heating andso I say it stays between 17 and
23 degrees.

Sam Brown (47:59):
Through winter as well.

Yeah, through winter and that's where the
window opened.
So it just stays at that sortof very stable standpoint and
that's Wellington.
Wellington is a reasonablystable climate, but our things
do go up and down a lot morethan that.
But ours just goes pretty muchlevel, which means that I don't
need to have air conditioning, Idon't need to buy jerseys, you

(48:25):
just get used to living at avery constant temperature, which
is quite good and, I wouldargue, very eco-sustainable In
terms of the materials that ituses.
Obviously, if you're building amulti-story building, then
you're probably likely to beusing some steel and some
concrete.
It is possible to buildbuildings, as Ben will tell you,
using good new timber productslike CLT, where you could build

(48:49):
the whole building out of CLT.
But CLT, while really good formulti-story buildings, it is
quite resonant because it's alively structure and so you need
to try and dampen it down orstop the sound propagating
through the building.
So there's an element of thatas well.

Sam Brown (49:08):
Just quickly on the CLT thing.
The guy, the extra of yours,jordan Robinson, I had to bear
with him the other day.
He works for XLam now.
And he was saying that the newairport hanger for Air New
Zealand at Auckland that's allmassive, huge curved CLT trusses
.
He said that I think he said itwas something like the amount

(49:30):
of timber that's going into thatwould only take something like
four weeks of regrowth toreplenish, which is insane.
There's a crazy statistic onhow sustainable that is.
I sort of challenged him.
I was like you need a lot oftimber in comparison to steel or
concrete to achieve sort of thestructural requirements of
these timber frame builds and Iwas like how sustainable is it?

(49:52):
And he helped me with that sortof metric.

And I was like Jesus.
The density of the timber isnowhere near what it used to be
back in the day, though.
Yeah, accelerated growth.

Sam Brown (50:02):
Four weeks of regrowth, nothing, and it's all
carbon sunk as well, so you knowit's pretty impressive.

Yeah, yeah, that's the great thing Very
eco-friendly using timber.
So it really does justsequester that timber away.
Now some people who are antitimber will say, yeah, but what
happens in the end when you haveto pull it down and put all
that stuff in landfill?
I don't think you're going topull it down, I don't think
you're going to put it inlandfill.
I think because CLT is so easyto join together to erect into a

(50:29):
structure.
In the unlikely event that youcome to pull it down Dismental
200 years later, you just takethe screws out or saw the screws
off and reuse those bits oftimber.
I would suspect we won't knowfor 200 years, but I think that
it'll be readily able to be done.

We're a series of decks and carports and a
little backyard sheds made outof giant CLT.
I look forward to that yeahdefinitely, hey guys.

so yeah, we've had a good chat about
densification.
It's been amazing just talkingabout timber and you know what's
happening in that realm.
Why don't you just give us awell, the audience a quick
rundown on your new book?
And that's what we're doing.

So this book, so this is a project really being
run by Amina Petrovich andMautengirda and Fabricio Sheikah
and I joined her as editors.
But so sustainability andtoxicity of building materials.
So I think this is the firstbook in the world which has
really gone into a hell of a lotof detail on the amount of

(51:34):
issues that the toxicityespecially, but also the
sustainability of buildingmaterials.
And so in that I've got twochapters on timber, one on just
looking at the trees and onelooking at them in use, so
looking at the glues that weglue, things together with the
treatment that we you knowwhether H3 or H1.2 and different
sorts of treatments and thingslike that, and how toxic that is

(51:56):
if there are alternatives andthings.
So it's really looking at thoseaspects of timber and then also
written in the chapter withMauteng on metals.
So we're looking at all thedifferent metals that are used
on a building site or that couldbe used on a building site and
looking at how toxic they are.
And so some of them are.
Obviously, you know, most ofthem are perfectly neutral to

(52:18):
use on when you're on site, butsome of them the mining of the
materials, you know, createshuge problems.
So you know, we might even likea lithium ion battery for your,
for your, ratchet gun.
You know, getting the lithium,as we know, is a real problem.

Yeah.
So after doing your researchand writing that, what is your
opinion on treatment levels inthe building code?
You know, especially in NewZealand, for example, higher
H3.2 treatment levels around wetareas, kitchens, that sort of
thing.

That's a real problem for New Zealand, because
we're one of the few countriesin the world that still allows
us to use CCA as a treatment forH3.2.
So copper, chrome and arsenic.
Arsenic is obviously the poison, but also the types of, or the
isotopes of, copper and of thechromium that they use are also

(53:15):
incredibly toxic, which is whythey're so successful in a
treatment.
So you bath, bathe the piece oftimber in this sort of toxic mix
and the bugs don't want to eatit because they'll die.
So they go.
Ah, I don't want to touch that,and so that's why it works,
that's why you can bury thesethings.
It stops rot, stops bugs.
But it also means that you'vegot a permanently poisoned piece

(53:36):
of timber which, in the case ofwhen you have to, if you're
doing any off cuts and thingslike that you can't even you
can't burn them in the fire oranything like that you have to
actually take them into a toxicwaste area of the local dump and
bury them wrapped in plasticand things.
So that's a very nonnon-friendly type of thing.
And so there are some answers,which are the easy answers.

(53:57):
We should stop using CCA and weshould use other methods of
treatment.

So our OSP, which is, you know, light
organic solvent preservative,which is basically our only
other option at the moment.

No, no, there are some other options, so one of
them is copper Azole and one ofthem is micronized copper.
So so there's a way, adifferent way of doing the
copper, so using micronizedcopper.
And there's also those of youwatching might be yelling out at
me, but there's another coppersystem, so copper Azole, and I
forget that.

I guess it comes down to the accessibility once
again, though, because H3.2 andH3.1, which is your LOSP and
your CCA are readily availableoff the shelf at your local
hardware store.

Yep, they are, but they're banned in Japan.
They're banned in the USA.
They're banned in most ofEurope.
They're available in NewZealand, Australia and Africa.

That's crazy Interesting man.
We need to.
We need some updates there.

Yeah, that's my point.

We've been cleaning it all day.
Yeah, I know, yeah.

I mean, how often do you guys, when you're on site
, how often do you wear gogglesand a mask and wear gloves when
you travel on H3?

We don't know if you've been here for years and
I never did.

Yeah, if you read my book, you'll want to start.
You don't want to find out whatit does to the size of your
testicles.

Sam Brown (55:21):
Oh, that's why, Damn it, it's reproduction function.

Oh, that's horrible.

Yeah, that's a conversation stopper right there
, isn't it?
Yeah?

it is, yeah, it is, it is, oh, no, no, no, but
yeah, it's too real, it's nottoo real.

It's not the testicles.
We should be able to.
No, I mean, some of thetreatment levels are.
You know, it's not thetesticles.
Some of the treatment levelsare not on that, but on the use
of tin.
I think it was, which we usedto use on corrugated iron.
Roofs would use tin, the use oftin on the bottom of ships, so
they use it as an anti-foulingpaint.

(56:01):
It affects the sex of snailsand crabs, fix them to such a
degree that they actually becomehermaphrodites, so they grow
both male and female genitaliaand obviously can't breed
successfully with either side.
But it's causing seriousproblems at the bottom of the
ocean.
And we're still human, we'restill animals, so it affects us.

(56:23):
Not in quite the same way, butit's not good for your gonads to
have these sorts of things.

Sam Brown (56:29):
That's fascinating, I mean.
I think a lot of this comesback, well, comes back to a key
thing, and that's well, it'spolicy change, right, I think?

you're going to say it's be good to your gonads.
That's what this is all about.

Sam Brown (56:45):
What I was going to say is I mean both medium
density thing and interestinglyenough the new governments
scrapped the MDSR and also thistreatment thing like how do you
implore the people at the top,the governments or policymakers
or whatever, to make thesechanges to better our
environment, both built andnatural?

(57:05):
What are your guys' thoughts onthat?

I know what I think.
I want to hear from you, Ty.

Sam Brown (57:11):
I mean, from my perspective, I think all you can
do is what we need to do asarchitects is be the better man,
in a sense, and make sure thatwe are specifying products that
are not using these treatmentmethods and looking for
alternatives and make thatchange from the base.
I think that's from a materialpoint of view, and then I also

(57:33):
think from a development pointof view.
I think we need to implore ourclients to be more considerate
in the quality and also thedesign and layout of the medium
density developments.
That's my two cents.
I don't know.

Yeah, I think architects have kind of a duty
of care to make sure they're notmaking rubbish and to design
the best you possibly can withthe tools you've got at the time
.
I think the thing that probablymost of New Zealanders struggle
with is like it's so differentto the quarter acre dream, or

(58:08):
they perceive it as so differentbecause they haven't seen the
spectrum of alternatives,because it is such a huge
spectrum.
Then within that spectrum theyprobably haven't seen many good
examples, because I don't thinkthere's that many truly good
examples that most sane humanbeings would go inside of and be
like, yeah, shit, I could livehere.
I think it's a voting scheme, Iguess as well the better work

(58:33):
we do, the more likely peopleare going to enjoy and continue
to thrive and live in thesecommunities.

Sam Brown (58:39):
Sort of a base up change rather than a top down
change.

Yeah, but I think a lot of architects just
do what they're told, whereasyou kind of need to make sure
you're making good spaces.

Sam Brown (58:52):
Yeah to roll, for us to be a little bit more
confident in our approach.

We can't just pull her off to the client and
say, oh no, they didn't let us.

The problem is it's not really the architects
I'm worried about in thissituation.
I'm sure anyone any architectthat is designing higher density
buildings is doing betteralready.
It's the policy that, as Guypreviously said, the minimum
standard at the moment.
That's allowing developers tobuild not so nice products.

(59:28):
So I guess that's kind of whereI see the issue being at the
moment, not so much thedeveloper driven projects.

Sam Brown (59:34):
It's almost like and I talk about this quite a lot
because it's something that'sclose to my heart but you need
those sort of externalinfluences that aren't
necessarily policy based, butthings like Homestar or
GreenStar, neighbours, all thosesort of external things, and
once public recognition of thosestarts to increase and people

(59:55):
realize that you can't build tocode because they're not going
to meet those standards, thosestandards- are probably the ones
that are going to look to drivequality a little bit more.

Guy Marriage (01:00:05):
Yeah, and from my point of view, one of the key
things that we need to get, andprobably one of the reasons why
we have such poor outcomes atthe moment, is that we don't
have anybody in government thathas any knowledge or
understanding of the sector.
So we didn't have under labor,there was nobody really, that
there was no body with anyarchitectural training.

(01:00:25):
We don't have anybody undernational enact that's got any
understanding.
So we've got a new minister,minister Pink, who's apparently
a really nice guy and used to bethe commander of a submarine in
the Australian Navy, which I'msure is fantastic.
Sure, I'll meet him one day andhe will be nice, but he doesn't
know.
Bugger, all about buildings.

Sam Brown (01:00:47):
So any architects out there want to get into politics
?

Well, that's what we need.
That is honestly what we need.
We do need people witharchitectural training to stand
for various parties, eitherlabor or green, or even national
hopefully not for act.
That would be too sad.

Ben Sutherland (01:01:04):
I know.

I'd like to actually stand and put the hand
up and be involved in politics,because we actually need some
people who know what they'retalking about in politics and
who can talk from position ofpower and knowledge and
sensibility People like DavidSeymour.
He's totally clueless on awhole bunch of things which he's
unfortunately got a largeamount of sway in making the

(01:01:27):
decisions on.
His attitude is too much redtape.
Get rid of the red tape.
But, as we all know, asarchitects, you actually do need
some red tape because otherwisethings can go really badly
wrong on site.
So we do need to have somestandards that we're working to
and things like that and thesystem in place.
So it's important to havepeople that know what they're
talking about within the system.

(01:01:49):
So, yeah, I look forward toseeing.
I'm too old for that.
I'm a very old man now, justabout retire and move on to my
smoking a pipe on the porch.
But you guys are all young soand you're full of verve and zip
and Jared's full of somethingGod knows what, but he's full of
extra energy his whole life.

(01:02:10):
Maybe he should give up makingfurniture and run for run for
parliament and that's you becomethe MP for Wellington Central.

Sam Brown (01:02:19):
There you go, there you go, jared.

I'd vote for you .

Gerard Dombroski (01:02:22):
Jared, I like taking jokes too, joe.

All right, guys.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on and having a chat with
us about densification.
I know I've definitely learneda lot.
I'm sure the others have aswell.

Sam Brown (01:02:40):
Yeah, it's been great , thank you.

Well, thank you for inviting me.
It's been great fun and I hopeyour podcast goes well and
continues to grow and grow.

Gerard Dombroski (01:02:50):
That's all for today.
See you next time.
Once again, big thanks toCondom and, for the visual art,
jacob Marshall for the sound,and don't forget to rate and
review.

Sam Brown (01:03:02):
Thanks, guys, peace.
Thank you Bye.

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