Wharf designs miss the boat

Megan Rule's scheme incorporated a wharf crane as a nod to the area's heritage. Photo / Supplied

Shortlisted designs for Queens Wharf met a chorus of public disapproval and raise the prospect that Auckland is heading for a waterfront planning flop. Chris Barton considers the flaws

The title of Mike Austin's Queen's Wharf entry for the "Opening the Red Gates" design competition is: "Just in case no one else points it out". As it happens, quite a few other entries did point it out, but the judges didn't notice.

"It's odd that you arrive in Auckland and you've got no idea this is the largest Polynesian city in the world," says Austin, professor of Architecture at Auckland's Unitec. Looking at the five finalists' designs for the wharf at the foot of Queen St, you'd be none the wiser either.

Austin and others had highlighted the fairly obvious - the city lacks a ceremonial entry space from the sea, the wharf sheds and the Maori whare have the same gable roof shape, and the open marae is our unique architectural space for welcoming visitors.

It's not hard to see how the sea end of the wharf could easily become such a space - a new carved mahau (porch) on the gable end of Shed 10, a marae in front, and Shed 11 to the side with a mix of restaurants, becomes a kind of whare kai. Spend a bit of money commissioning avant-garde carving and you could end up with a work of art.

"My version would be to get master carver, sculptor Lyonel Grant to put the new mahau front on the shed," says Austin.

"The marae could be sloped down towards the meeting house so people stepped up onto it for traditional welcomes. The porch could be used for performances and, during the World Cup, you could put a screen in front of the meeting house and have everybody sitting on the marae."

Like many other submissions, including one from Maori architect Rewi Thompson, Austin's includes a jetty-plus-beach at the end of the wharf for arrival by sea and for waka to land. The exclusion of Maori from the judging panel has incensed Ngati Whatua chair Naida Glavish.

"We thought we had long moved on from the 'design apartheid' of the 19th and 20th centuries where our built environments created separate worlds for Maori and European," she says.

Glavish isn't the only one annoyed. "As I saw it, there was virtually no brief, no nominated judges until after the launch ... There was almost no time to do the design, and no money at the end," wrote Dave Mitchell in Block, the Auckland branch broadsheet of the New Zealand Institute of Architects.

Mitchell an NZIA gold medal winner was scathing of the competition process. "This is an $80 million building project. The total sum to be paid to all contestants for the key design ideas stage is 1/1000th of the project cost. That shows you the value that our national and local governments together place on design."

In answer to a number of questions, a joint statement from the Auckland Regional Council, Auckland City Council and the Government (the joint body) says: "In the brief developed we are aiming to achieve a diverse range of objectives within a limited time frame and budget."

Austin and many others who entered never expected to win. But they had hoped the competition, which seemed to be a call for ideas, would at least assess schemes for their merits. "This is not a design," says Austin of his entry. "It's just a notion of how to do things, but nothing much seems to have happened to the ideas put forward."

From 237 entries, just five have been deemed worthy enough to go on to a second stage design development. There's been no analysis of the others, no report - except for a vague, two-page "Key issues for Stage 2" document.

The joint body says Stage 2 is for refining designs for those who they believe "got the fundamentals right." But it seems the finalists still have to address some fundamentals, including "how to appropriately reveal our history, geography and cultures, cater for cruise ship industry needs, provide adequate shelter for public events, e.g RWC2011 and be an inviting public space".

A question has to be asked: Is there anything worthy among the competition losers? A cursory look indicates a wealth of ideas that appear to have been ignored. And some schemes that seem far more thought through that the ones chosen. Perhaps it's like the famous 1863 Salon des Refuses (exhibition of rejects) in Paris which refused artists such as Edouard Manet? Probably not quite in the same league. But we did find some recurring themes.

Skybridges and shelter

A surprising aspect of the winning entries is that none appear to have dealt with two fundamental design issues. One: that it rains a lot in Auckland. Two: a 40m-high cruise ship terminal needs skybridges to get passengers on and off.

Barry Copeland of Copeland Associates points out that with cruise ships either side of the wharf, the only way to get the terminal to work is with passenger bridges and a skybridge across the wharf. "If you don't have them there is no Customs security separation. They are also an important part of the architecture because they are quite big structures."

Megan Rule's scheme by South Pacific Architecture and Mike Farrant Architects also shows such a structure - in that case using a wharf crane as a nod to the heritage of the place. Both schemes exploited the structures to provide elevated viewing areas and restaurants or cafes with harbour vistas.

Copeland says the other key requirement of the brief was to provide the public with some shelter. His scheme featured a massive floating canopy stretching from the Quay St entrance to the end of the wharf. "We proposed a low cost tension membrane canopy that would give cover for 20,000 people for the Rugby World Cup - especially if it rained like last week - but which was also going to be attractive to people after the Cup to start using the wharf for other activities."

A temporary party

A number of schemes suggested the real driver for this design competition, "Party Central" could be dealt with by the use of temporary structures - like stages for rock concerts that come and go and can be bought or leased.

Peter Hollenstein of Hollenstein Associates employed a fabric-covered frame covering most of the north east end of the wharf.

"When this party is over, it can be kept, taken down, moved wholly or partly to another venue or very easily adapted to future event requirements."

Contamination and transport

Quite a few entries broke out of the competition brief to point out some glaring problems Auckland has yet to deal with. An example was No. 10 (www.queenswharf.org.nz/designs/completelist.asp) which focused on the surrounding seabed's pollution by decades of run-off including heavy metals.

It proposed dredging the contaminated mud and using the "mudcrete" to form two lagoons either side of the wharf. The wetland areas would serve as an eco-friendly way to deal with ongoing stormwater pollution of the waterfront.

Landscape architect Sam Bourne also went off-brief with a proposal to remove the cruise ship terminal from Queen's Wharf and put it at Wynyard Wharf as part of the Tank Farm development.

This would free up Queen's Wharf, take congestion away from the botton of Queen St and provide a second transport hub to complement Britomart - eventually fitting in with a second harbour crossing.

"No designs have looked at the cruise ship terminal as a core piece of transport infrastructure that could help develop the city," says Bourne.

"The competition was heralded as 'opening the red gates' for the public. But it seems the red fence is just being moved to the right."

The joint body says Queen's Wharf was chosen "mainly for its proximity to Auckland's CBD - helping make the most of the economic benefits from the cruise ship industry."

Sustainability showcase

Many schemes, such as Unitec associate professor of Architecture Dushko Bogunovich's, proposed using the wharf as a showcase for green technologies. Sustainable energy also featured in Copeland's and Hollenstein's schemes.

Copeland proposed a six-star rating, rather than the five-star in the brief - via photovoltaic panels on the roof of Shed 11 to work LED lights, collecting rainwater to flush the toilets and seawater operated heat pumps. Hollenstein went a step further with solar panels on the roofs of both.

"It would have been the biggest solar power plant in New Zealand - providing 300 megawatt hours of power per annum."

Muddled brief, muddled processJust what the design competition is setting out do remains a mystery. As well as five finalists, three teams have been selected - one of which has several rejected entries and one which didn't enter any designs at all.

The joint body says the teams will be required to submit a design in Stage 2. The process is based on the Britomart development where an individual designer ended up collaborating with a consortium to complete the project.

A legacy of that scheme was downtown's Queen Elizabeth Square, considered by many to be one of the worst examples of public space in Auckland.

Copeland points out it wasn't made clear in the competition guidelines that the teams entry and the design entries would be judged independently.

His firm entered both and assumed the broad concepts outlined on the design board would be married up with the detail - including design philosophy, engineering feasibility and quantity surveyor's estimate - in the firm's team submission.. He was dismayed to find they weren't.

The joint body says the same advisory panel was used on both assessments.

Hollenstein found the brief weighted too heavily towards the cruise ship terminal.

"The ARC wants a glorified palace for people coming off ships when what's really needed, at best, is shelter to get off the boat for a passport check and then on to a bus."

The competition also didn't allow for the display of models, restricting entries to a single A4 sheet. A number of architects including Copeland and Rule have clearly spent considerable time and effort developing their schemes with models, but unfortunately no one gets to see them.

"We found the model really helped to understand the whole site and the process," says Rule. "It allows you to look at it from all sorts of different angles and showed up a conflict in the brief between those who wanted the cruise terminal and those who wanted the ferry terminal to expand."

The joint body says its ultimately responsible for choosing the best design and will ensure "the approved design is completely appropriate for Queens Wharf's setting and purpose."

Great - assuming we know what that purpose, beyond the Rugby World Cup, is.

Review writer Chris Barton has a Master of Architecture.


THE FINALISTS: READERS REVOLT

Where is the sense of romance, the magic, the wow, the big idea, the bold gesture, the sense of place?

Michael Major, Remuera

Whatever the wharf development will have, it will not have the one requirement that a space like this demands in the city - the ability to keep drawing the public back to use it again and again through unique attractions and entertainment.

Gary Bennett, Totara Heights

Queens Wharf after the Rugby World Cup ... will become an empty, windy shrine that broke a crucial rule - define the activity first, then design something to serve it. Remember that first there was opera, then there was the Sydney Opera House.

Phil O'Reilly, Herne Bay

The project specifications seem to overlook a primary problem - how to connect the new precinct with QE Square across the blustery and ever-busy Quay St.

Merv Smith, Avondale

FEEDBACK TO THE HERALD ONLINE:

No offence folks, but really. Bleedin' 'orrible, all of them. If that's the best of 237 entries I shudder to think how bad the others were ... Who are the judges? They should be fired.

Ozymandias (Auckland)

Hideously inhuman is how I'd describe each of these. Not designed for people, but robots. Is that a reflection of our society?

ella girl (Auckland)

I saw the entries downtown and was largely impressed. These finalists weren't the best.

Howie B (Auckland Central)

Just a request that you should be able to walk from Queen St to the wharf and walk around the wharf without getting wet or blown away by the rain and wind.

Clint

The whole thing is so symbolically Auckland. Throw it together in three weeks, build it in 18 months for 50c. All done by the usual suspects.

tomtom (Point Chevalier)

You would have thought that given a couple of long rectangular buildings ("the sheds") already on site, these could have been adapted to look like an iconic Maori meeting house complex.

Jay (Swanson)

I'm angry that we have to build a cruise terminal all over again because the Princes Wharf residents don't like ships blocking their view.

Geoff (Grey Lynn)