A retirement village in central Auckland designed with vulnerable occupants at its core.
The Foundation Village is a retirement village development for Generus Living Group in Parnell, central Auckland. Building 1 is an 1,800 square metre, four-storey residential block - the first of a planned three to four buildings across the precinct. The ground floor includes tenancies for Blind & Low Vision NZ, housing some of the most vulnerable occupants in any residential development.
The water supplies and service interfaces for Building 1 were designed to make full provision for future connection to Building 2, ensuring the precinct could be developed incrementally without the need to retrofit infrastructure. The overall objective was to take a holistic view of fire protection across the whole precinct, establishing whether the surrounding water supplies were capable of serving all planned buildings from the outset.
Fire protection engineering from concept through construction, fully coordinated in 3D.
Osborn Associates were appointed to carry out fire protection engineering for Building 1, working closely with the client, architects and the wider services design team. The entire design was produced as a fully coordinated 3D model in Revit, managed through BIM 360 to ensure seamless collaboration across the project team.
The scope covered concept design through to detailed design and tender, carrying the project through the construction stages and benchmarking installation items to ensure compliance with the fire engineering report and the relevant New Zealand design standards: NZS 4541, NZS 4512 and NZS 4510.
Designing fire protection for elderly residents and people with visual impairment.
The demographic of the building's occupants required careful consideration throughout the fire protection design. Elderly residents and the Blind & Low Vision NZ tenants on the ground floor present specific challenges around speed of egress and the effectiveness of fire warning systems. The team worked closely with the fire engineer to develop solutions that addressed these vulnerabilities while meeting the requirements of New Zealand standards.
Eliminating unnecessary protection through collaborative problem-solving.
The original design proposed a roof structure on top of the level 4 concrete slab, creating a void that would typically require sprinkler protection. Through collaborative engagement with the sprinkler system certifier, the team assessed the space and determined that as a non-storage area with no combustible materials, omitting sprinklers would be compliant with the relevant standard.
The client and architects subsequently revised the roofing system to reduce the size of the void, further strengthening the compliance position. This kind of pragmatic, code-informed collaboration saved the client unnecessary cost while maintaining full regulatory compliance - demonstrating the value of involving fire protection engineers early in the design process.
