Four Front Doors

Growing up in rural Kaikōura, my family’s home sat within a landscape where public and private life blurred easily. Neighbours would drop by with vegetables or wild shot meat, while a small coffee business running out of the shed meant strangers regularly crossed the threshold. These exchanges were not intrusive to the home but part of a rhythm of generosity, enabled by the sparseness of rural life and the abundance of undefined spaces. In the city, this quality is largely absent. As urban housing acknowledges the conventional functions of the private home but rarely challenges them, it reinforces a separation between domestic and civic life. Apartments and housing typologies prioritise efficiency and enclosure, limiting opportunities for shared experience. The reinforcement of these models causes architecture to miss the chance to explore the benefits and potentials of city living, where the question of how we live together may be more important than the virtues of the private dwelling. How can urban density enable a generous shared experience through design that mediates civic and domestic life? By challenging Wellington's urban living conventions and critiquing the monofunctional programming of the city, this thesis proposes an architecture that layers experiences and functions, intertwining civic and domestic life. This research aims to generate an alternate way of living in Wellington that fosters generosity, overlap, and shared experiences.