The team behind the Daisy apartment building respond to the fury it unleashed from Mike Hosking.

Daisy exists because Ockham Residential set a goal of building an international best practice sustainable urban residence. Tāmaki Makaurau is maturing into the South Pacific’s most vibrant and cosmopolitan city. Across many sectors there is a collective transformational spirit to aim high and look confidently to the future.

Daisy is part of that aspirational future – affordable, energy efficient, well connected urban living. In fact, Daisy is the first ever Homestar 10 rated apartment building in New Zealand, boasting German heat recovery ventilation systems, solar powered communal hot water, silver ion glazing that lets in light but not heat, energy efficient appliances, rain water harvesting – the list of innovative features goes on. And by the way, Daisy has 33 bicycle parks, 13 scooter parks and two shared cars to radically lower her carbon footprint and positively reinforce the nearby public transport networks. Sorry Mike, we don’t give a fuck about the nanny state compulsory car parking of the past. We are pro-choice.

Price points for apartments in Daisy averaged $530K, just 60% of the current REINZ median house price in Auckland. Why? In large part, because each apartment did not come with a $100k private underground carpark hewn from volcanic basalt, unleashing another vehicle per apartment onto Auckland’s already crowded streets.

That doesn’t mean that transport has been ignored. Daisy has great transport links, being just 80 metres from Auckland’s busiest bus route, and 10 minutes’ walk from both the Kingsland and Mt Eden train stations. The idea is that Daisy’s location makes a car free life possible. City fringe street parking in Auckland is practically non-existent, meaning that Daisy residents buy or rent with the expectation that they will not be able to park outside the building – but they have other choices.

We also wanted the Daisy apartments to be warm, dry and well built. We want Aucklanders to love them. They’re located where Aucklanders want to live – near to all the great night life, cultural events, cuisine and shopping that our ātaahua Tāmaki Makaurau has to offer.

For the record, Auckland Council didn’t tell us to do it. We were enabled to build a car free building because Aucklanders collectively decided over three years of public consultation that our mokopuna’s future was best served by removing the previous outdated car-centric planning rules from the progressive Unitary Plan. Developers are no longer compelled to include expensive parking in city and city fringe buildings (although most still do). This now means Aucklanders have the choice to live in well located buildings like Daisy without being forced to pay for a car park they may not want. Daisy is pro future, pro-choice and pro-environment.

And FYI Mike, when you find that apartment with the views, the balcony, the storage facility and three car parks, it will cost you several million dollars. And that’s fine, because you can afford it. Congratulations, and good for you. However, for most Aucklanders who live in this beautiful city of ours, several million dollars is way out of reach. Slightly more than half a million is incredibly hard work. We built Daisy because we give a damn about those people. We want them to have an option to live here comfortably too, and Daisy is one way they can do that.

Oh, and why did we call it Daisy? Daisy is located in Akepiro Street. Akepiro is a native tree colloquially known as New Zealand’s tree daisy. Seemed a no-brainer really – relevant, meaningful and beautiful, the antithesis of outmoded ideas about empire and state.

Mark Todd is co-founder of Ockham Residential

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