Skip to content
  • Miki Tiltman
  • Architecture
  • Design
  • Contact
  1. Home
  2. Architecture
  3. Master’s Thesis

Whānau, Whenua, Whare

Master’s of Architecture Thesis 2024-2025 

Collaborating with Te Whare Hangahanga and XFrame. 

Read The Thesis Online

About

This thesis explores the feasibility of prefabricated systems for fast, affordable and resilient whare construction, guided by Mātauranga Māori values. It focuses on enabling whānau-led, on-site assembly while assessing the real challenges in system integration and construction method.

Consolidating Passive House principles, CNC-enabled prefabrication and whānau participation, the research offers a flexible framework for scalable, self-sufficient housing. Developed in collaboration with Te Whare Hangahanga and XFrame, it aims to drive indigenous-led innovation and advance equitable housing.

Collaborators

A Māori family-led housing initiative building warm, affordable homes on ancestral land.

Te Whare Hangahanga

XFrame delivers modular, sustainable building systems for the built environment. Operating globally with innovative circular solutions.

XFrame

Prototype

The brief came from the client, not the studio: a home that is warm, dry and affordable, and that the family could assemble themselves without specialist contractors. Working directly with them and with XFrame, I developed a 30 m² prototype as a construction system, Passive House–informed envelope verified in PHPP, CNC-cut timber structure, foundation-to-roof construction details, production cut files, a costed bill of materials and illustrated assembly instructions. The wall panels have since been fabricated and assembled by the family from those drawings.

The project sits at the intersection of three things large practices are working on now: offsite manufacturing, low-energy housing, and community-led design.

Logic
Visualisations
1:2 Structural Model
←Structural System Model
Thesis Logic→

The Full Portfolio

Miki Tiltman Portfolio_compressedDownload
←Structural System Model
Thesis Logic→

available for graduate architecture roleS

Miki Tiltman

  • LINKEDIN
  • Instagram
  • STUDIO
  • Contact