Rich Naish: RTA Studio Architect on the new Living House prototype

A new affordable housing solution has just been completed. 

The Living House, designed by RTA Studio, takes just six weeks to build, costing only $333 thousand.  

It costs $253,000 less than the Government’s average Kainga Ora build, and Architect Rich Naish told Mike Hosking they got frustrated by the failure of successive governments to build truly affordable housing.  

He says they’ve designed it to be scalable, optimising it down to the cheapest and simplest build so it can be repeated by individuals or organisations. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Housing News and how you can do it for a
decent price. So we've got a three bedroom house built
in six weeks for three hundred and thirty three thousand dollars.
That is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars less than
the average government constructed Coying aur A house. It's been
done by architect Rich Nash and his team. It's called
a Living House and Rich Nation as well. It's Rich.
Very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, morning, Mike, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Not at all? What size is the house?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's eighty five square meters, so.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
She's a wee one. So what's that come out at
cost per meter?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Well, so it's about four thousand a square meter, But
it's sort of more about the amenity that you get
rather than the size.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Right, And so is it a good looking house and
one you're proud of and one eye would buy and
be happy to live in?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I have? Yeah? I think so it is a good looking,
cute little house. It's well proportioned, got great volume, ventilation,
light and all that sort of stuff. I think you'd
love one. Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
What's what have you done it for? What's its purpose?
Simply to prove that you can build a house for
a reasonable price.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, not really. I think I've just been frustrated sort
of looking at successive governments trying to make affordable housing
and doing it at twice what we've been able to
do it, and we just sort of put our thinking
caps on and thought, there's got to be a better
way to do this.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
And there is clearly, and you've just proven it.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Is it scalable or are they all one offs in
that sense?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
No, it's absolutely scalable. We've optimized it down to something
that is the simplest and cheapest thing to build so
that it can be repeated. There's no alterations. It's designed
to be repeated and built by individuals or organizations.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Right, Without wanting to go too far down the track
of defending klaying or I do know that some of
their costs come in the fact that some of the
people that they put into those houses require a fairly
robust experience inside. Would your stand up to a bit
of you know.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
A bit of bi Yeah, well, I mean look absolutely,
they're made of it's like a peace flat pack furniture.
Instead of the bits of plywood, it's made of colt,
which is cross laminated timber, so it's up to sort
of one hundred and twenty one hundred and sixty milimeters
six solid pine with that's the finish on the walls,
so there's no war pay, there's no paint, so they're

(02:17):
really robust.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Okay, do you do you want to take this somewhere?
Is this somewhere you're going or was this just an
exercise for you as an architect?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
No, absolutely not. We've started a company called The Living
House and were we go. We're launching to the market
in a little over a month or six weeks time.
We're built. Yeah, we've built a prototype and rotaroo, so
it's we've proven that it can be done.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
And I should point out this is excellent. So it's
three thirty three grand plus land, right, yeah, that's right,
absolutely yeah. So what in your summation is the major
issue with the cost of housing in this country? Is
it labor? Is it product? Is it design? Is it paperwork?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
What is it? Well? I think it's the labors probably
the number one issue. A typical New Zealand house and
the way we're building them out of stick tumber, the
way we have for the last you know, two hundred years.
It's forty percent labor in any house, and in the
living house we've stripped that down to ten percent. So
taking the labor cost out is really one of the

(03:17):
big areas of attack.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Interesting, all right, go well with that, Rich, I wish
you the best with a rich Nache living house architecture,
texting me, So four thousand dollars is affordable housing? Holy,
what are you expecting to pay? What is it you're
expecting play? I can show you apartments in Auckland, and
yes they're very high end. But I can show you
apartments in Auckland for forty thousand dollars a square meter.

(03:40):
I can show you what I would regard as pretty
average house, regular house you'd look at and go yep,
I could. I could live ten thousand dollars a square meter.
I don't know what you can build for less than
four thousand dollars a square meter. I built a barn
relatively recently, which it's a nice barn, but it's certainly
not one you'd live in. But I built that barn
for any excess of four thousand dollars a square meter,

(04:02):
and there's nothing about it that go yeah, but you're
a wretch. Precker can it's nothing about that.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
It was just hasn't got a batless pantry.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
It hasn't got a buttless pench, It hasn't got a pantry.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
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