The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was built on time and to budget. Photo / AP
Opinion
To truly become the world's most liveable city, our peerless natural environment offering Aucklanders many great and varied outdoor lifestyles needs backing up with world-class architecture that surpasses the structures that distinguish other great global cities.
Auckland was founded around its port. As we redefine Auckland's future, our waterfront is
the obvious site to commission an architect with vision to design and build a 22nd-century Polynesian- themed building able to last 1000 years.
Take as an example what Canadian architect Frank Gehry has achieved in the decrepit port area of the Basque city of Bilbao. His simple brief was to build something daring and innovative. The result is the world-renowned Bilbao Guggenheim Museum building (below) clad in long-lasting glass, titanium and limestone, and more important to locals creating a redefined sustainable anchor for the city's economy.
We can also learn from Gehry's management and leadership style. The building was constructed on time and budget, which is rare for architecture of this type. In an interview, Gehry explained how he did it. First, he ensured that what he calls the "organisation of the artist" prevailed during construction, to prevent political and business interests from interfering with the design. Second, he made sure he had a detailed and realistic cost estimate before proceeding.
Third, he used computer visualisations and collaborated closely with the individual building trades to control costs during construction. Computer simulations of the building's structure made it feasible to build shapes that architects of earlier eras would have found nearly impossible to construct.
