Grainform reimagines New Zealand’s ability to grow, manufacture and use its own timber through a new tree-to-dwelling mass timber housing chain.

The project is set in New Zealand’s largest forestry of Kaingaroa and the small milling town within. Kaingaroa embodies a national condition of abundant forestry resources, struggling local industry and a pressing need for quality housing. Grainform proposes a ‘re-laminated’ housing chain to address New Zealand’s imbalance in raw log exports. The project challenges this imbalance and champions manufacturing housing where the timber grows and exporting knowledge, systems and architectural innovation instead. This is explored in an architectural project that reconsiders Aotearoa’s radiata pine forests, symbolised by the circle and the line.

The line proposes an upgrade and adaptive reuse of the existing run-down Kaingaroa factory, enabling it to produce mass timber products. The structure not only upgrades the factory but also offers opportunities to upskill the town through an integrated forestry school tied into the factory’s edge.

The circle is a housing project that tests the factory’s timer outputs in a ring scheme around the factory. This ring is eroded into three communal houses, creating knots of dense community and spans of open ring park space.