Together, discovering an Urban Ngahere
In responding to the climate and housing crises across the motu, there is an opportunity to inspire a new urban form that celebrates green spaces and nature. With current densification limitations filling sites and reducing the urban forest canopy, a range of international responses can be considered and combined with a distinctly “Kiwi” approach, where trees remain a constant in an evolving built environment.
Existing mature urban trees provide many benefits, from the scientific and technical, to the emotional and phenomenological. A combined set of design solutions is investigated in this thesis, presented as a toolbox that enables an ecologically considered use of site. Creating opportunities that tie the experience of trees to a new, dense urban form, where the urban forest should be expanded. The Ngahere: more than just the forest or bush, but also an ecosystem and set of values.
