About us

Designed by Aonui Architecture, built by Wright Industrial Ltd, Te Whare -iti was a winner in the SNUG ‘A house in your backyard’ design competition run by Auckland City and PrefabNZ in 2018.

Journey to affordable prefabricated modular houses

Finding a solution for affordable housing didn’t happen overnight.

For Aonui Architecture, designers of Te Whare-iti, the SNUG award was the culmination of several years investigation of prefabricated construction, which marked the beginning of the plan to bring affordable modular homes to buyers with surplus urban land throughout New Zealand.

Government policies promoting increased density in cities and better utilisation of space and infrastructure have further promoted our plan to build and sell Te Whare-iti at scale.

See Aonui is a winner in the PrefabNZ SNUG Competition with Te Whare-iti.

Magic of modules

The flexibility of modular design contributes to the popularity of Te Whare-iti. 

While the 10 modules are standardised, we can assemble any number of them and in whatever configuration that best suits your needs and the size, shape, and contours of your site.

The smallest Te Whare-iti, the studio TWI-02, is 33m2 and is made up of three modules.

A three-bedroom Te Whare-iti, for example TWI-36, can be up to 91m2, made up of nine modules.

But why stop with three bedrooms?

We can work with your whānau to create papakāinga housing (multi-generational) with shared living areas, a common courtyard, and individual whānau spaces.

Off-site manufacturing key to managing quality and cost 

Assembling the houses off-site, using cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels, saves time and therefore money.

Houses are fully finished in 8–10 weeks at Wright Industrial’s Porirua plant and transported to the purchaser’s site, where the modules are typically craned into place onto piles set out in advance.

Houses are then connected to the services which have been laid to the site during the off-site assembly phase and, usually within a month of house arrival,  owners are handed their Code Compliance Certificate and keys to their new home.

A sustainable future

License holders Wright Industrial began assembling the first group of homes for Wellington area purchasers in April 2021

We expect to have 20 installed for families in the region by the end of 2022.

Contact us to discuss options that would suit your situation.