First look: Auckland's brand-new waterfront plaza is almost finished

There's an enormous woven net in Auckland's brand new waterfront plaza: a kupenga, made of bright green nylon webbing, cross-hatched in the style of a basket. It will stretch across a big hole in the plaza, above the water, and you'll be able to lie on it, let the kids run around, bounce a little.

At other holes, you can look down and see marine ecology at work: a million mussels, in time, growing on kūtai waka, or suspended ropes, along with kelp and other sea life.

Welcome to Te Wānanga, the new public space jutting into the ferry basin, with a new seawall underneath, mature pōhutukawa dotted throughout, and the pedestrian/cycling/vehicle streetscape of a newly reconfigured Quay St running alongside.

Two-and-a-half years in the making, close to a decade in the planning, and from next Friday, finally open to the public.

Te Wānanga joins the new square in the bottom of Queen St as a feature attraction in the regeneration of downtown Auckland, currently under way courtesy of Auckland Council and Auckland Transport.

The new-look Quay St with Te Wānanga plaza protruding over the water at left. Photo / Auckland Council

While Queen St remains controversial and Albert St has taken a real battering, Te Wānanga is the demo model for civic planning downtown. The place they're really proud of.

Design lead on the project was in the hands of Isthmus Group, who worked with 11 iwi groups and five kāhui kaiarataki, or specialist artists, and several artisan construction companies.

Detail of the kupenga, or net, that will be slung over a hole in the Te Wānanga plaza. Photo / Auckland Council

Mana whenua has been gifting some surprising names to the council for these new spaces. That bottom Queen St block has become the pedestrianised Te Komititanga: the place where people gather.

It's a transliteration that may or may not appeal to office workers who attend a lot of meetings.

This new plaza over the water is Te Wānanga: the place of learning. That invites a deeper response. You can sit and eat your lunch here, in the sunshine or the pōhutukawa shade, or wait for a ferry, or just hang out and watch the world walk by and the boats come and go. But "Te Wānanga" means there are also things to learn.

The plaza has been designed to connect to the history of the place, once a foreshore with plentiful flounder, later the site of early commerce, now home to the restoration of what Cr Chris Darby calls the city's "soft edge" with the water.

A soft edge, he adds, that was always there until "the industrial fortress port shut us off".

"My vision," he says, "is that one day we'll be able to spill out of our offices with our beach towels and swim in the beautiful clean waters."

Barry Potter, Auckland Council director of infrastructure (left), Cr Chris Darby, chair of planning committee (centre) and Eric van Essen, Te Wānanga project director. Photo / Greg Purcell

Not quite there yet, but on the way. The big trees of Te Wānanga have giant root bowls hanging below the deck, above the water. Along Quay St the trees and grasses and shrubs have been planted in beds designed to capture and clean stormwater: the weather in this part of town will not foul the sea.

The timber balustrades feature whakairo, or carving, with a te wairere motif symbolising the relationship of people and the sea. Right by the whakairo, there are haumi, or tightly laced together rope bindings. They're there to enjoy, for their meaning, or for the beauty, or for the feel of them under your hand.

Balustrade detail at Te Wānanga plaza. Photo / Auckland Council

There are "taonga species" in the planted beds, mostly raised in the Ngāti Whātua Ōrakei papakainga nursery, with more ferns and epiphytes to come. There's a lot of seating; an undulating form to the outer edge, designed to evoke the natural curves of a coastline.

It wasn't easy. "We had it designed in 2014," says project director Eric van Essen, "but the stars were not aligned."

The sea wall was threatening to collapse, the ferries needed new berths and Quay St and Queen St were both desperate for some TLC. The Britomart shopping precinct was growing and planning was under way for the giant new retail and office complex that would become Commercial Bay.

Seating in the new Te Wānanga plaza, next to the Ferry Building in downtown Auckland. Photo / Auckland Council

Threatening to confound every good idea and plan, the City Rail Link was about to dig up half the entire downtown precinct.

Council infrastructure manager Barry Potter says it all got so complicated he started to wonder if coordination was even possible.

"So I said to the guys on the ground, 'You go and have a beer and work it out'."

Van Essen stepped up, and so did the project teams at the CRL and Commercial Bay, agreeing to combine their excavation work. Urgency was introduced by the looming defence of the America's Cup.

Then Covid arrived, killing off the dream that a beautiful new downtown could be built in time to welcome all the tourists. But it didn't kill the plans for the plaza.

The newly refurbished Quay St, with Te Wānanga plaza in the centre and the soon-to-open new ferry berths on Queens Wharf at right. Photo / Auckland Council

We've had to wait two-and-a-half years. All that road-cone rage. And now, a brand-new urban park, opening next Friday, and Quay St fully functional, with more to come.

The way it was: road cones and snarled-up traffic, during the redevelopment phase of the Quay St project. Photo / Dean Purcell

On the following Monday, the ferries will move to Te Ngau O Horotiu, their six brand-new berths on Queens Wharf.

Downtown, the transport hub, says Cr Darby, is getting the kind of public spaces a city deserves.