Heritage-Led Regeneration for Underused Historic Churches Using a Community-Led Approach in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

The concept of adaptive reuse has become an important strategy for addressing housing shortages, climate pressures, and the loss of obsolete heritage by repurposing existing buildings. In AotearoaNew Zealand, many historic buildings, particularly churches, are at risk of demolition by neglect, seismic vulnerability, and non‑compliance with current building codes. The diversity and shift in religious beliefs have left many ecclesiastical spaces underutilised, while urban expansion has made these site's amenities increasingly inaccessible by walking.

Although adaptive reuse is discussed with growing interest in New Zealand, its acceptance and implementation are still met with considerable scepticism. Many building conversions privilege profit and focus on the development of luxury apartments, upscale retail and exclusive event venues, that serve private capital rather than public good. This thesis therefore questions how can underutilised heritage churches be adapted and repurposed through a community-led approach to promote social cohesion and collective participation with local cultural heritage?

St James Church, constructed in 1900 and listed as a Category B heritage place on Auckland Council’s heritage schedule, is situated in Mount Eden and forms the focus of this study. The methodology underpinning this research adopts a heritage-led design approach and proposes a theoretical framework based on four key principles drawn from the International Council on Monuments and Sites New Zealand Charter (2010): minimum intervention, use, adaptation and risk mitigation. This framework is informed by detailed site analysis, the examination of international case studies, and a foundation of existing knowledge established through a literature review. Together, these methods inform the development of both the design and theoretical framework, enabling a rigorous iterative design process that generates a potential model for the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings.

A bottom‑up approach is proposed, through a charitable trust model where residents define programmes, design priorities and important heritage elements for conservation work. The potential outcome is a resilient, mixed‑income community that gathers around a democratised heritage asset. Rather than showcasing elite capital, the reactivated church becomes a shared social infrastructure that affirms collective identity, encouraging intercultural dialogue, and demonstrating that heritage conservation and social justice can coexist, reinforcing one another in the changing modern urban landscape. The proposed framework offers a transferable model for community-led adaptive reuse of underused historic churches in similar contexts.