By Cato Bolam
Rata Terraces is an affordable housing initiative, set in the heart of the rapidly growing suburb of Papatoetoe. The land is zoned Mixed Housing Suburban, the most widespread zone covering many established suburbs.
This development offers 101, one and two bedroom terrace units, developed from a new small-footprint typology which includes a standardised module for affordable development. The smaller building footprints were carefully considered to deliver a spacious, yet affordable niche in the market, while the use of different external treatments created a mix of dwellings delivering a well-balanced, and varied built form.
Cato Bolam developed the initial concepts by Archimedia, through a non-notified resource consent stage. This included value engineering and site design by successfully enabling this development of 101 dwellings to be serviced by a private access road, which was endorsed by Auckland Transport. The proposed scheme takes advantage of the two end road connections to create a new private road linkage, affording the possibility for good accessibility and connections, while creating smaller sub-groups of housing and parking within this large, long site. The site layout utilises a rotational symmetry to divide it into two elements, which in turn are further broken down in scale. This creates a sense of community which is suburban in its character, yet which maximises the overall yield to provide for the most efficient form of land development.
Our team will be delivering on all civil engineering, planning, surveying services, in addition to developing the detailed plans through to building consent. The project is still in construction phase (as of Oct 2020) with an anticipated completion date of late 2021. The end result will be a project which will provide a sense of community, increasing housing capacity and offering valid and attainable housing choice, all in a manner which delivers a high quality on-site living environment, and which respects the amenity values of all neighbouring sites.
Photo Credit - Alexander Foster
Renders supplied by Du Val
Cato Bolam is a multi-disciplined professional consultancy providing start-to-end solutions for all aspects of subdivision, housing, urban development, civil engineering, architecture, resource management, statutory planning, surveying and environmental (ecology and land contamination).
Our planners, surveyors, engineers, architects and environmental experts are highly skilled problem solvers who understand the importance of time, clear communication and being dependable. We provide services New Zealand-wide from four offices.
We take pride in delivering cost-effective and innovative solutions, adding value to our clients’ projects. Whether as the lead professional managing the project with our in-house team or collaborating with a team on your project, our experienced and responsive team will be your partners from the start to the finish delivering results and making for a hassle-free process.
We work on residential, rural and commercial projects with landowners, land developers, architects and other consultancies and support services, councils and government agencies. We have extensive experience delivering urban subdivisions from 2 to 1000+ lots, high and medium intensity urban developments, land use activities such as retirement developments and town centres through to countryside living and rural subdivisions.
We provide the following services to the private, corporate and public sector: