3 Results: Organisations Conducting Research

Unitec

Dushko Bogunovich (Associate Professor of Urban Design)

Private Bag 92025
Carrington Road, Mt Albert
Auckland

Phone: (09) 815 4321
Email: dushko@unitec.ac.nz
Website: www.unitec.ac.nz

In planning:

Title (provisional):

'Eco-tech cities' (book)

Purpose:

To explain and advocate the theory, models and applications of the concept of 'green and smart' cities.

Title (provisional):

'Auckland CBD: urban design strategy'

Purpose:

To define the key issues, values, methods and principles for defining a set of strategic directions for the future evolution of the CBD's physical form; client: ACC.

Co-researcher:

Peter Matthews.

In progress:

Title:

'Eco-tech village @ Unitec'

Purpose:

A project proposal for the Unitec campus. Part of the founding process of Unitec's Key Centre for Sustainable Development (which evolved from the original project: 'Eco-Campus Unitec 2000: Environmental Design Guidelines for an Ecologically Sustainable Urban Campus').

Co-researchers:

Brendan Hoare, Haikai Tane, Ljuibica Stojnic.

Title:

'ArtWeb Auckland'

Purpose:

An applied research project which combines urban ecology, architecture, landscape architecture, public art, GIS, CAD and world wide web. Client: Auckland Regional Arts Trust. Role: design strategies, sustainability issues, website component. Status: initial funding approved ($150,000).

Co-researchers:

Associate Professor Rod Barnett, Matthew Bradbury, Zane Egginton.

Completed:

Title:

CASE: Cities as sustainable ecosystems (2003)

Purpose:

To effect radical, world-wide change in the way cities are planned, designed, constructed and operated. This comprised workshops and a final document review for UNEP, including participation in defining the Melbourne Principles of urban sustainability. See http://www.unep.or.jp/ietc/Publications/Insight/Jun-02/3.asp

Co-researchers:

Dr Peter Halls (UNEP-IETC).

Title:

Eco-tech Cities: Smart metabolism for a green urbanism (2002)

Purpose:

A paper presented at the Second International Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability: The Sustainable City II, held in Segovia, Spain, 3-5 July 2002. Published in the proceedings of the conference by WIT Press, 2002, pp 75-84.

Title:

Cyber-Eco-Cities: Sustainable city planning, governance, and management with information technology, by JK Gupta, D Bogunovich, AK Varshney (2001). Published in Proceedings of the 49th National Town and Country Planners Congress, 5-7 February 2001, Institute of Town Planners India, Hyderabad, pp 1-7.

Title:

'The Next Fifty Years: Eco-cyborg Chandigarh' (2001)

Purpose:

Paper presented at the conference Chandigarh: Celebrating 50 Years of the Idea, held in Chandigarh, 8-11 January 1999. Published in the proceedings of the conference by Chandigarh Perspectives, 2001, pp 363-371. Abstract published on: http://www.cperspectives.org/Events/ParallelSessions/ Abstracts/dushko_bogunovich.htm

Comments:

Articles related to research on ecological/sustainable urban design:

• Avondale Urban Living Plan: Strategic urban design (2003). Final report for Auckland City Council.
• Avondale Urban Living Plan: Contextual Analysis, Strategic Urban Design (2003) First draft report for Auckland City Council.
• Protocol with potential? Planning Quarterly, 2003, Dec: 16-17.
• The rural landscape - sustainability by design. Landscape NZ, 2003, Nov/Dec: 14-18 [with B Hoare and D Scott].
• Getting behind the rhetoric: designing cities for sustainability with government's help or without? Landscape NZ, 2003, Sept/Oct: 19-21 [with B Hoare and D Scott].
• The need for a healthy attitude to landscape. Landscape NZ, 2003, July/Aug: 14-18 [with B Hoare and D Scott].
• Reviving our urban centres. NZ Environment, 2003, (Sept)39: 6-8 [with Matthew Ledbury].
• Marriage of IT and ET: eco-tech - a design philosophy whose time has come. Landscape NZ, 2000, Nov/Dec: 35-36.

Unitec, School of Architecture (ScALA)

Dr Regan Potangaroa (Associate Professor)

Private Bag 92-025
Carrington Road, Mt Albert
Auckland

Phone: (09) 815 4321 extn 7261
Email: rpotanga@unitec.ac.nz
Website: www.unitec.ac.nz

In planning:

Title (provisional):

'Natural Ventilation of Refugee Camps'

Purpose:

To produce natural ventilation guidelines for the design and construction of refugee camps. The large proportion of refugee camps are in hot or humid climates where the need to ensure that passive design measures (such as natural ventilation) are crucial. There are presently no guidelines for site planners and engineers and hence the need for this research. This will be in conjunction with UNHCR (Unitec Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

Title (provisional):

'Auckland CBD: urban design strategy'

Purpose:

To define the key issues, values, methods and principles for defining a set of strategic directions for the future evolution of the CBD's physical form; client: ACC.

Co-researcher:

Peter Matthews.

In progress:

Title:

'Design Guidelines for Natural Ventilation of Schools in Malaysia'

Purpose:

The design guidelines seek to assist designers of schools to orientate and incorporate sufficient features to ensure adequate outside air flushes through the school. The objective being both thermal comfort and indoor air quality.

Co-researchers:

Dr Samirah, Tecknologi Malasyia (Mara), Dr Bin Su Unitec, Prof Richard Aynsley.

Title:

'Canyons of Auckland City'

Purpose:

Wind flows other than those parallel or perpendicular to the canyon set up cork screw vortices along the street and their complexity does not appear to be fully understood. Moreover, this research and the above parallel/perpendicular research modelled long canyons with no ends. Such a model would in the case of Auckland CBD be representative of Queen Street (the cities 'main' street) but would not be representative of the many side streets off Queen Street. These streets are shorter, narrower and are 'blocked' at each end by cross roads.

This study reviews the wind flow in such canyons using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the lower Queen Street area and its side streets. It then compares the ability of natural wind flows to flush out this part of the CBD (and in particular the side streets of Queen Street) against what the standard canyon models would suggest.

Co-researcher:

Prof Richard Aynsley.

Title:

'Were the Turn of the Century Maori Tuned to Climate?'

Purpose:

This research will take weather data readings at traditional Maori sites and in particular both inside and outside whare nui. The data will then be analysed using an adaptive thermal comfort model. This will show how well or otherwise the sites selected achieved their thermal comfort goals.

This is interesting research aside from the content of the work but also in that it is one of the few areas where urban design approaches have crossed into historic, cultural and anthropological dimensions that are close to 'home'.

Title:

'The Production of Synthetic Wind Climate Data'

Purpose:

The use of natural ventilation strategies for buildings is often based on distant wind climate data rather than site specific data. This is done because such site specific data is not available. Where there are no significant terrain changes such approaches can be easily justified. But topological differences between sites are more problematic.

For example, the New Zealand loadings code NZS4203 lists four different wind terrain categories with category 1 being a snow field, category 2 being airfields with isolated trees, category 3 being level wooded country or low density suburbs to category 4 being city buildings (NZS4203,1992). And designers allow for changes of terrain by applying the appropriate category factors of NZS 4203. Factors for hills, ridges and escarpments are also included in the code and such topological factors have been also used by designers. However, there are questions about the validity of such an application.

Nonetheless, the need for site specific wind climate still remains.

As a first step, this research utilising a CFD simulation of the area encompassing the airport and Unitec Institute of Technology in Mount Albert (approximately 15 kilometres away). The wind climate at the airport and at Unitec from this CFD model was then compared against that recorded by weather stations at the two sites. The objective is to be able to develop a methodology for producing synthetic wind data. Such data would have a impact on building design and hence the urban landscape.

Co-researcher:

Prof Richard Aynsley.

Completed:

Title:

Double Facades and Natural Ventilation (2002)

Purpose:

Studied the special pressure distribution behind a double façade that is open between floors and at the top and the natural ventilation implications of that pressure distribution. This could be described as the ultimate natural ventilation 'mechanism'.

Co-researcher:

Prof Richard Aynsley.

Title:

Natural Ventilation Design Tools (2002)

Purpose:

The development of a natural ventilation tool for high rise buildings suitable for the early design stages. These are in the form of spreadsheets and require only the site climate data. Hence, the tools impact on the way buildings are designed and in particular how they relate to the outside.

Co-researcher:

Prof Richard Aynsley.

Title:

Beyond the Bioclimatic (2002)

Purpose:

The urban areas in tropical regions such as SE Asia are developing quickly. And the building design guidance available (such as Ken Yeang's work) while suggesting various approaches for using natural ventilation does not give designers any indication of which approaches have better natural ventilation results than others. This research, based on the topical climates of Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, Jarkarta and Hong Kong gives direction and ranks the approaches.

Co-researcher:

Prof Richard Aynsley.

Title:

Sexual Violence Against Women and Children in Refugee Camps (2004)

Purpose:

This work was the first field trials of the opportunity matrix developed by Julie Mair at John Hopkins University. The matrix, developed from crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) approaches has been applied in this case to refugee camps and is intended as a tool for site planners to use for focusing on the associated issues of design.

Co-researchers:

Julie Mair, John Hopkins University, USA.

University of Auckland, School of Architecture

Nick Karlovsky

PO Box 22 805
Otahuhu

Work phone: (09) 262 8900 ext 5856
Home phone: (09) 276 7161
Fax: (09) 262 5168
Email: nkarlovs@manukau.govt.nz
Website: www.auckland.ac.nz

In planning:

Nil.

In progress:

Nil.

Completed:

Title:

New Urbanism in Old Papatoetoe (2002)

Purpose:

Master's in Architecture research report.

University of Auckland, School of Architecture

Professor Brenda Vale or Associate Professor Robert Vale

26 Symonds Street
Private Bag 92 019
Auckland

Email: b.vale@auckland.ac.nz
Email: r.vale@auckland.ac.nz
Website: www.auckland.ac.nz

In planning:

Title (provisional):

'Zero CO₂ housing development in Auckland'

Purpose:

A study and demonstration of cost-effective sustainable housing in a real world situation.

Co-researchers:

Confidential at present.

In progress:

Title:

'Zero energy retrofit'

Purpose:

To investigate and demonstrate ways of making existing houses into sustainable houses, through the use of simple upgrades combined with photovoltaics. The first 4.4 kW photovoltaic array is now in operation and is being monitored.

Title:

'How to assess appropriate levels of insulated mass for the New Zealand climate'

Purpose:

Existing modelling software does not deal with annual storage of energy. Research to date shows that to model what can be measured in a zero heating building with insulated mass this must be considered, otherwise modelling results will be faulty.

Co-researcher:

Dr P Mithrarartne.

Completed:

Title:

Sustainability Indicators for Residential Blocks (2004)

Purpose:

To find indicators for the potential of residential blocks to be sustainable, using aerial photographs. If funds become available this work could be linked to GIS. Five major indicators of potential sustainability were: energy, transport, food, carbon sequestration and waste. The research demonstrated that the rush to densification could be destroying the potential to be more sustainable in terms of the indicators.

Co-researcher:

Sumita Ghosh.

Title:

The Environmental Impact of New Ways of Working in the Office (2003)

Purpose:

To measure the environmental impact of office buildings, the home office and the journey to work and assess which way of working offers the lowest environmental impact. The research showed that in terms of CO₂ emissions the home office was the lowest, with a mixture of home and office working having a lower impact than intensive use of a central office.

Co-researcher:

Dr Paul Jurasovich.

Title:

NABERS: A built environment rating system for Australia (2003)

Purpose:

To produce a performance-based rating system that would deal with any buildings and that would measure performance in use as opposed to design intentions.

Co-researcher:

Professor Roger Fay.

Title:

From Idea To Practice: The influence of overseas ideas on New Zealand housing (2001)

Purpose:

A PhD looking at the transfer of housing ideas from the US and UK to New Zealand in the 20th century and the effect (often detrimental) on New Zealand urban and suburban environments.

Co-researcher:

Dr Mitra Emami.

University of Auckland, School of Architecture

Clinton Bird (Associate Head, Design)

26 Symonds Street
Private Bag 92-019
Auckland

Email: c.bird@auckland.ac.nz

In planning:

Nil.

In progress:

Title:

'Rules for controlling high intensity residential development in New Zealand'

Purpose:

To survey the types and statutory status of rule packages deployed by the various territorial authorities and the context of these packages, in the course of preparing a rule package for a particular territorial authority.

Completed:

Title:

The Pavilion in the South Pacific (2003)

Purpose:

To explore the relationship between design and research, and the iconography of the pavilion as an appropriately culturally expressive urban design component of contemporary South Pacific cities.

Title:

The European House: Crossing the 'aiga malae' (2001)

Purpose:

To investigate settlement patterns in South Pacific communities which may be appropriate to the urban design expression of South Pacific conditions in New Zealand.

University of Auckland, School of Architecture

Errol Haarhoff (Professor of Architecture, Head of School of Architecture)

Phone: (09) 373 7599 ext 88629
Email: e.haarhoff@auckland.ac.nz
Website: www.auckland.ac.nz

In planning:

Title (provisional):

'Apartment development in the context of urban design'

Purpose:

To establish key urban design criteria for high-rise/high-development city apartments and transport-orientated development that achieves qualitative environmental outcomes.

In progress:

Nil.

Completed:

Title:

Review of Apartment Living in Auckland (BIA funded: Report completed April 2004)

Purpose:

See BIA entry.