Diane Hume-Green attended two recent events involving the architectural world in Tauranga. The first of the Urban Design Café Series was held at QV Eatery and was sponsored by Resene.
The Urban Design Cafe Series, is a series of discussions with guest speakers about sustainable housing design, new ideas on multi-density cities, landscaping, walkability in our city and other related topics.
The first guest speaker, Carsten Beets, an Eco-building consultant, spoke about the need to get residential design to actually reflect the need for sustainability and lower energy consumption but can still reflect comfortable homes for all sizes of “family units”.
Phil Green, committee member of The Avenues Residents Association, GRANRA, and designer, hosted the event. The discussion after the informative talk was excellent with local residents, designers and business owners who made up the audience taking part.
Note: there are further talks planned for The Urban Design Cafe Series. Watch ARTbop and local print media.
ADNZ held an architectural tour to three award-winning houses by local designers and also the original part of Excelsa village.
The houses were award winners in the recent ADNZ awards and the tour visited Mount Maunganui, Papamoa and Cherrywood. The three homes highlighted the use of different materials and well designed spaces for individual clients by these award winners, Richard Hale, Jason MacDonald and Robin Baillie. Intensive housing at Excelsa showed how small houses with laneways can have a positive effect on community living for all ages.
