Rudman's city: Seven ways to bring bus, rail downtown

It's been an unusual exercise for Aucklanders, being trusted to take part in the design of a public facility, but we seem to have taken to it like the proverbial duck to water.

Back in June when the 153 entries in the son-of-Britomart design contest were unveiled, I must admit I had my doubts.

In that display, the bizarre, the impractical and the cor blimey tended to dominate. However, the judging panel and the 800 or so Aucklanders who had their say kept their feet firmly grounded.

The result was seven finalists and a set of commonsense guidelines for them, based partly on the public input, partly on practical considerations such as engineering possibilities and costs.

Three months on, the seven - Mario Madavag, Leuschke Group, Andrew Patterson Architects, Wayne Lees and Aaron Sills, Andrews Scott Cotton, Crosson Clarke and Amanda Reynolds, Archimedia/DEM and Creative Spaces/Cox Richardson Architects - have come up with their final designs, which are now on display in the old CPO.

The fascination for the viewer this time is not in the grand vision or fantasy of the first-round entrants, but in the practical solutions arrived at to address the requirements of the design brief.

These constraints include a budget ceiling of $130 million, opposition from the council to undergrounding Quay St, a strong preference from bus operators for a terminal at ground level, and a keenly expressed desire of the public that water be brought into the site and that a "South Pacific identity" be expressed.

The architects also had to get their heads around such new-age refinements as "design proposals should contribute to the healing of the highly modified harbour edge relationship; healing and enhancing the holistic inter-relationship between land, sea, sky and people."

I need not have feared. The above jargon is kindergarten talk compared with some of the architect-speak that the entrants fired back.

"The Britomart area is firmly set into the orthogonal urban matrix," explains entry 003 (no names until judging ends on November 3).

Or: "Smoke and mirrors become the plenum integrating a matrix of devices, people, air, light and noise into a great travel machine." That from entrant 006.

Luckily there are plenty of pictures to fall back on. With the undergrounding of Quay St rejected, entrants had the problem of getting pedestrians across the busy road to the ferry terminal and the waterfront.

Some put traffic islands along the middle and planted lots of trees to soften the landscape. Others tried overbridges and a tunnel.

Some have drastic solutions for the windswept wilderness that can be Queen Elizabeth Square.

One proposal is to fill in much of the western side with more buildings. Another is to cover it all in glass and turn it into an all-year wintergarden. Then there is the plan to plant a kauri forest there, though what the trees would do when the roots met the salty water below I hate to think.

Most favour reopening the square as a street and using it as a ground-level bus or light-rail terminus. In compensation, smaller, more human scale squares are dotted around the various proposals.

Entry 005 agrees with the others that Queen St should end at the waterfront, but solves the problem rather differently. It creates a harbour inlet extending through the present square up to Customs St.

Three of the entrants cannot resist hijacking Queens Wharf, even though it's not part of the exercise. Each sees it as a vitally needed extension of existing ferry facilities. One sees it as a bird park as well, another as an urban park.

Buses and trains? Oh yes, they're there. As expected, the trains are underground, resplendent in a variety of modern-day rail palaces.

As for the buses and light rail, well after all the sound and fury about burying them, they seem to be just where they should be, at ground level, in the streets adjacent to the old post office.

I wonder what Les Mills and his allies would make of it all?