Waterfront Design Concepts Background Sea+City Projects, Auckland, New Zealand

The design brief presented to the POAL team in October 2004 was largely based on 24 to 36 months of consultation and workshops undertaken as part of a process initiated by POAL, VHHL and ACC in 2001. This wide reaching exercise involved a number of international planners, architects and academics from the UK,USA, Australia and New Zealand along with representatives from a wide range of community groups.

The POAL exercise endeavoured to bring together a leading New Zealand urban design team, led by Patrick Clifford at Architectus, with world respected planner and landscape designer Peter Walker from San Francisco. The design process also involved a considerable undertaking from Beca Infrastructure, as many of the opportunities and constraints associated with the site are grounded in complex engineering issues such as contamination, reclamation issues and transportation.

As the design process advanced, it was critiqued by others including formal reviews by Doug Leighton and a review by an Auckland City panel consisting of Ian Athfield, Will Thresher, John Hunt and Gordon Mollar. POAL also undertook direct stakeholder consultation and a formal public consultation/display process was undertaken in September 2005.

The concept needed to be economically sustainable, but also incorporate inspired and achievable public outcomes which would capture the imagination of the wider community. The initial framework objective aimed to get the ‘bones’ of the urban design right, that is, an urban structure which responded powerfully to the key primary concepts and that was robust and flexible enough to incorporate/absorb a wide range of other ideas/buildings and activities as the area is progressively developed. If the public spaces were well structured, they would establish a strong and legible framework for the discussion about the activities and buildings that are subsequently layered into the precinct.

These spaces needed to be active and vibrant to succeed and relied on the introduction of other public and private activities to create the complex layering of uses necessary to make this a vital people place. The design team was concerned about social and environmental outcomes and were also conscious of the need for the scheme to be grounded in New Zealand’s pacific culture. A detailed economic and environmental analysis was carried out to ensure the project was sustainable.

Since then a considerable period of consultation has ensued with Auckland City Council and other key stakeholders. As a result the original plan was materially modified. Key changes include:

Increasing of the size of the park at the northern end of the site from 1.3 to 4.3 ha.
Providing the potential for an iconic building on the northern end of the precinct.
Extending and widening Daldy Street through to the point park to create a direct physical and visual connection between Victoria Park and the harbour’s edge.
Increasing the land available for marine industrial uses by approximately 40%.
Incorporating the potential for a marine events centre at the northern end of Halsey Street (Halsey Street extension wharf)
Reducing the originally proposed height of potential developments
Reducing the commercial components in Wynyard Wharf in terms of scope and height.

These modifications culminated in the development of the concept framework plan reviewed and adopted by the Auckland Regional Council and Auckland City Council mid 2006. This modified plan forms the conceptual basis for the plan change notified by ACC in July 2007.