This paper reports on a theoretical student design project to seismically upgrade buildings in a historic precinct of Wellington. The unique feature of the structural upgrading, heritage retention and adaptation, and new building interventions in the precinct was that all retrofitting designs were applied to pairs or clusters of buildings in order to develop new strategies for their seismic retrofit. The tying of buildings together as part of retrofitting is rarely encountered in earthquake engineering practice but this can be an important retrofitting approach as shown by the following design outcomes and case-study example. The main finding from the architectural design and seismic retrofit of 70 clusters of two to three buildings was the diversity of the retrofitting strategies that were applied. Two primary categories of retrofitting were identified; tying existing buildings together, and tying existing buildings to new buildings, with each category incorporating several variants. This paper highlights the advantages of retrofitting clusters of buildings to prevent seismic pounding, and for other economic and architectural reasons.