At Here, we celebrate house design – but we don’t often think about how the land is prepared to make that possible. For the past five years, photographer Howard Greive has been documenting the development of a coastal subdivision on a long white-sand beach on the east coast of the North Island where he’s spent most summers since he was a child.

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It’s a fascinating project. Has anyone ever tracked the transformation from rural paddock to fully formed subdivision and then into the beginnings of a beach community? As a series, the images are a time-lapse, fast-forwarded through time. We see rolling grass paddocks, and then we see bulldozers and diggers, then kerbs and roads. Sections are marked out; retaining walls, water tanks and houses added.

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“I started to document the subdivision simply because I thought it would be an interesting project. Almost anthropologic,” says Greive. “A New Zealand seaside subdivision, from beginning to end, bound up in the desires and the costs – particularly to nature, which has no say.” (It’s a continuing theme for the photographer, who documented a similar impact on nature in his book At Rest: A Road Trip to Anthropocene.)

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Most recently, the subdivision has sprouted a diverse range of buildings, which will be familiar to anyone who’s visited a new coastal settlement. Often, there’s a slight contingency to the occupation of the land, a kind of glorified campground feel. There are some very large beach houses,  but there are also glorified garages, and a smattering of caravans, Portacoms and cabins.

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As houses get built, there is a vernacular emerging, and it’s different to previous iterations of the bach. “Clearly what constitutes a bach has changed,” says Greive. “It once was a simple structure that required a simple lifestyle. Do we still cling to the mythology of the simple bach life, but live an extension of our suburban selves?”

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As each parcel develops, you can see the priorities – water tank, somewhere to put the boat, then a house. It’s a process of place-making that will continue… to an extent. “There is a long distance from farm to fully formed settlement with its own culture,” says Greive. “This gap is interesting – and it’s a mercurial culture. There for a month, then gone.”