Future-proofing Service Stations in Wellington: an architectural transformation addressing alternative fuels and disaster readiness

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a novel design framework (Pātiki) for service station transformation, merging energy transition, resilience, and cultural sensitivity.

🏢実務担当者:Offers actionable design strategies for converting existing service stations into multi-energy hubs with emergency response capabilities.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the need for integrated policy on land use, energy infrastructure, and disaster planning, with a transferable framework.

Service stations are at a critical moment of transformation shaped by decarbonisation, technological change, shifting mobility patterns, land-use pressure, and increasing exposure to climate and seismic risk. In Wellington, these forces converge within a compact, high-seismic urban environment undergoing rapid energy transition. This thesis investigates how the architectural reconfiguration of service stations can move beyond single-function fuel provision toward adaptable, multi-layered infrastructures that integrate alternative energy systems, spatial resilience, and civic value. Adopting a mixed-methods, design-led approach, the research combines historical analysis, policy and regulatory review, hazard and lifeline modelling, precedent studies, and empirical fieldwork examining 27 service stations across Wellington. The findings reveal that existing typologies remain spatially and infrastructurally constrained by fossil-fuel logics, limiting their capacity to accommodate electric vehicle charging, hydrogen refuelling, energy storage, and emergency-response functions within seismically responsive environments. In response, the thesis proposes the Pātiki Design Framework, a culturally grounded and spatially modular strategy inspired by the Māori Pātiki pattern as a symbol of interconnection and continuity. Rather than a fixed guideline, the framework operates as a decision-making matrix to inform architects, engineers, planners, developers, fuel providers, and policymakers. It structures considerations around Multi-Energy integration, above-ground and modular infrastructure systems, energy autonomy layering, seismic resilience-by-design, and community-oriented programming. The framework is tested through three Wellington case-study design applications, demonstrating how existing stations can transition from transactional fuel depots to adaptive Multi-Energy Resilience Hubs capable of supporting operational continuity, emergency response, and long-term energy diversification. This research contributes an architectural model that positions service stations as dynamic civic infrastructures within evolving urban systems. While grounded in Wellington, it establishes transferable principles and opens pathways for further investigation into Multi-Energy integration, climate adaptation, governance coordination, and scalable resilient infrastructure design.

• openalex https://hdl.handle.net/2292/75586first seen 2026-06-04 04:37:31