Academic Staff
Dr Paola Boarin
Professor
Co-founder and Director
Research interests:
- Sustainable design
- Rating tools
- Post-occupancy evaluation
- Sustainable heritage conservation
- Design technology
Dr Iresh Jayawardena
Lecturer
Research Area Lead
Research interests:
- Ecologically-based planning approaches
- Water sensitive design
- Sustainability and climate resilient cities
- Socio-ecological systems, urban resilience and greenfield development
- Integrated catchment management
- Te Mana O te Wai, cultural ecosystem values and planning obligations
Dr Mohsen Mohammadzadeh
Senior Lecturer
Research Area Lead
Research interests:
- Critical Urban Theory
- Globalisation and Planning in the Emerging Global Cities
- Planning and Urban Conflicts
- Smart City, Cybernetic Technology and Ethics of Big Data
- Transportation and Infrastructure Planning
Dr Alessandro Premier
Senior Lecturer
Research Area Lead
Research interests:
- Advanced façade design
- Responsive architecture
- Smart materials
- Building retrofit
- Sustainable design strategies and innovation
- Colour and light in architecture
Dr Manfredo Manfredini
Associate Professor
Research Area Lead
Research interests:
- Urban design history, theory and criticism
- Architecture and spatial design history, theory and criticism
- Affordable and social housing history, theory and practice
- Modern European architecture history, theory and criticism
- Sustainable development
- Education in architecture
Patricia Austin
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Planning and affordable housing
- Sustainable housing, eco-districts and eco-towns
- Planning for an ageing population
- Planning for disabled access
- Designing inclusive accessible built environments
- Crime prevention, safer cities and communities
- Planning and injury prevention
- Strategies for more sustainable urban futures
Dr Elham Bahmanteymouri
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Urban Economics
- Urban Growth Management and Housing Policies
- Planning Theories and Political Economy of Space
- Digital and Platforms Economy
Dr Tom Baker
Associate Professor
Research interests:
- How public policies are made and implemented
- Role of learning, communication and interpersonal networks
- Role of local, national and inter/transnational agencies
- Role of political value systems and frameworks of meaning
- Role of particular places, scales and spaces
Dr I-Ting Chuang
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Informed Urban Design
- Urban and Architecture Development
- Spatial quality of public spaces
- Design informatics in urban geography
- Big data analytics in urban studies
Dr Michael Davis
Associate Professor
Research interests:
- ‘Live’ projects: Implications for academy, profession and communities
- Post-digital media practices: Critical making endeavors in architectural design
- Fabrication technologies: Repurposing the commonplace to effect the novel
- Indigenous New Zealand timbers: Extraction, use, reuse and tectonics
- Design research into the future of the architectural discipline in island economies.
Dr Priyanka Dhopade
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Quantification of the environmental impact of space infrastructure
- Thermal measurement techniques for atmospheric re-entry
- Working with iwi and hapū on renewable energy options for Māori housing
- Application of engineering tools to assess and improve inclusive culture in engineering environments
Dr Kim Dirks
Professor
Research interests:
- Liveable cities
- Urban air pollution exposure
- Environmental noise exposure
- Urban green space
- Road transport infrastructure
Dr Emilio Garcia
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Resilience, inequality and affordability
- Resilience of compact and disperse urban landscapes
- Adaptive change, transformative change and collapse in cities
- Panarchy, adaptive cycles, thresholds, and multiple stability states in built environments
- Measurement of resilience and heterogeneity of urban landscapes
- Resilience and Inheritance.
Dr Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Built environments for Pacific peoples
- Architectural practice-led research (or ‘action’ research)
- Pacific community and stakeholder engagement
- Values-led design processes
- Applying Indigenous knowledge to solve modern architectural problems
Prof Errol Haarhoff
Emeritus Professor
Co-founder
Research interests:
- Urban Design
- Urban Settlement History
- Urban Growth Management
- Urban Intensification and housing
- Modern Architecture History
Dr Kai Gu
Associate Professor
Research interests:
- Urban morphology and urban design
- Methods of characterising and managing the urban landscape
- Urban planning and design of Chinese cities
Dr Alys Longley
Associate Professor
Research interests:
- Interdisciplinary practice
- Performance writing
- Choreographic research
- Practice-led research
- Inclusive arts pedagogy
- Art and ecology
- Collaboration across languages and borders
Dr Sandeeka Mannakkara
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Climate Change Adaptation
- Building Back Better
- Resilient Cities
- Community Resilience
- Post-disaster Reconstruction and Recovery
- Indigenous Knowledge for Adaptation and Resilience
- Hybrid nature-based Solutions for Adaptation and Resilience
Dr Meg Parsons
Associate Professor
Research interests:
- Climate change adaptation and Indigenous peoples
- Social and cultural dimensions of climate change adaptation in regard to communities living on small islands
- Climate justice and gender justice
- Decolonisation and anti-colonialism
- Intersectionality and environmental management
- Freshwater management and governance, including co-governance
Dr Emilson Silva
Professor
Research interests:
- Energy Economics
- Development Economics
- Macroeconomics
- International Economics
Ms Julie Stout
Professional Teaching Fellow
Research interests:
- Urban form and typologies
- Public space
- Cultural influence on urban space
- Effect of sea-level rise on cities
Dr Marek Tesar
Professor
Research interests:
- Public space
- Global childhood studies
- The role of philosophy and post-theories in education and methodology
- Particular interest in post-structural, post-qualitative, posthuman, new materialism, new empiricism thinking
- International and comparative education
Dr Ferdinand Oswald
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Construction Detailing and Building Technologies
- Facade Design Strategies
- Optimizing Natural Ventilation
- Low -Tech architecture
- Reuse, recycling and separability of building components
PhD Students
Luis Medrano Gomez
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
- Building retrofit
- Sociotechnical Post-Occupancy Evaluations
- Retrofit policies and regulations
- Energy performance gap
- Human-building interaction
- Social practice theory
Joemier Pontawe
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
- Public transportation planning
- Climate change mitigation in the transport sector
- Active transportation and micromobility
- Paratransit and other informal transport services
- Local government / subnational level government planning and governance
Jane Waterhouse
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
- Health and environmental design
- Housing and aging in place
- Therapeutic environments, Person – Environment theories
- Environmental Psychology
- Phenomenology and embodiment
- Place and social construction of space
Azra Ahamed
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
- Social sustainability
- Social Housing
- Architecture and social life
- Assessment frameworks for social sustainability
- Sustainable housing
Baskoro Laksitoadi
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
- Adaptive reuse
- Building deconstruction
- Circular construction
- Material reuse
Kaining Zhang
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
- Heritage conservation
- Sustainability
- Urban management
- Urban regeneration
Marjan Rafiei
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
- Regenerative Sustainability
- Climate Resilience
- Energy-positive Precincts
Sara Saidi
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
-
Health and Environmental Design
-
Design for Diversity, Inclusion and Participation
-
Human-building interaction
-
User-centric Design
-
Post-Occupancy Evaluation
Subin Rahman
PhD Candidate
Research interests:
- Post-disaster sheltering processes
- Affordable Housing
- Community-oriented architecture
- Building technology & alternate techniques
- Sustainable construction practices