Days 1 - 3 in New Zealand and the "SHAC" Sustainable Habitat Challenge

We have been in New Zealand for 3 days now and the trip has been amazing so far. The plane ride was very very long and I didn't get any sleep on it, as I had hoped, but I was able to get a nice nap during the afternoon and rally for a nice night out in the Viaduct Harbor section of Auckland on new years eve.

On the second day of the trip we headed about 2 hours north of Auckland to visit some of Dr. Forgey's former students that are teaching at the University of Auckland. We met them at their vacation home, which is located at the base of a volcano, and enjoyed a nice lunch with their family. Following lunch we headed a little further north and visited the "Bay of Whales" which was an incredibly pretty place.

Day three brought a early wake up call from Dr. Forgey but it was definitely worth getting out of bed. We started out the day with breakfast in Mission beach which included breezes from the ocean and a view of a huge volcano rising out of the water. Following breakfast we took the ferry over to the Davenport neighborhood and scaled "Mount Victoria". Following this, we came back over to central Auckland and visited Dominion Park, the University of Auckland and the Auckland Museum. It has been a great day and I am looking forward to the arrival of the remainder of our group in Auckland.

We will be starting the study abroad portion of our trip tomorrow and I am looking forward to meeting with some of the local real estate professionals to get their take of some of the real estate and sustainability issues that we have been seeing around town.



The "SHAC" challenge is a sustainable housing competition that brought teams from across New Zealand together to build sustainable houses in a variety of locations and fashions across the country. The teams included architecture, engineering real estate students and they were matched up with industry mentors to provide them with guidance during their projects. The teams were given less than two years to design, fund and create their project.

Various construction methods and sustainability strategies were used by the different teams. The main themes of the houses included a home that was built out of dirt / brush combined with cement, a relocatable home, a bolt on garden room that can be attached to a high-rise apartment, a new home using normal purchasable products that are fully sustainable, a sustainable batch or vacation home, a modular home that can be constructed as individual rooms that can be connected, a retrofitted New Zealand housing authority home, and a home constructed of re-claimed timber and natural products. One team also created a number of sustainable products that could be used in and around the home.

The competition was a great success and all of the parties involved stated that they were extremely happy with the results. The outcome provided a significant amount of new ideas for sustainable housing in New Zealand and it also provided some new energy efficient homes at discounted prices for some lucky families. It also created a buzz for sustainable / energy efficient housing all across New Zealand. The competition is going to continue in 2011 and is sure to bring even more innovation and momentum to the sustainable housing movement in New Zealand.