The New Villa: A Contemporary Evolution of the Victorian and Edwardian Villa

Abstract

This thesis investigates the potential for a contemporary progression of the New Zealand Victorian and Edwardian villa. Widely cherished for their characteristic contribution to New Zealand’s oldest suburbs, the villa is regarded as a national icon. However, the villa is problematic not only in itself, but also as an image. Contemporary examples have looked to reconstruct the villa with modern building materials, improving the cold, dark and damp character that the traditional villa is well known for. Yet this reconstruction of the villa has also become the spectacle for imitation, superficially copied as a method to resonate with the historic fabric. Not only is this damaging to both the traditional villa and the modern imitations, it is hindering to typological progression. Coupled with this is the ‘Kiwi’ attachment to the ‘quarter acre pavlova paradise’ (Mitchell, 1972). This traditional attachment to our own ‘slice of heaven’ is increasingly becoming unobtainable for a growing number of young families, while suburban sprawl continues to take its toll on the environment. As a result, approaches to intensify city living have attempted to address some of these issues. However these approaches have been met with insufficient results, plagued with poor construction, planning and imitative form, and fail to address the attachment to the backyard. Consequently, a very real opportunity exists to create a sincere progression of the Victorian and Edwardian villa that is suitable for contemporary living patterns, addressing contemporary construction methods and the ‘Kiwi’ attachment to the backyard. As a result of this thesis being predominantly design-led, two schemes are presented, Villa Mark III & Villa Mark II. However, Mk III is the scheme that is most closely aligned with the research and is in fact a development of Mk II, therefore it is intended that Mk III is presented as the final scheme to the thesis.