Posts by Tom Beard
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Err, that's SkyscraperCity. What's wrong with good old fashioned HTML?
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I'm all for it - more [quality] inner-city living is exactly what Auckland needs. But aside from whether you like it or not, it's a private investment in the central city.
Exactly. It's not Gordon's best work, but the height doesn't bother me because it makes for better proportions. There are some earlier renderings over at the slightly mad http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=402736&page=4 SkyscaperCity which make it look very daringly slender. If only we had some of that boldness in Wellington: so many of our "skyscrapers" end up looking short & squat.
I was always tentatively in favour of the waterfront site, but after yesterday's Campbell Live I'm much more sure. How refreshing to have some sensible discussion about what's actually planned! If anything, it looks too low and deferential: it needs some vertical elements to give it more drama and rhythm. But in terms of fitting into the urban landscape (as far as one can talk of such a think in that location), I think it's good.
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here were also a number of really interesting options from some great designers (such Frank Gehry, designer of the risky and amazingly successful Balboa Guggenheim... I'd hate to see what Don Brash would have compared the designs for THAT to
Probably a feather or a fern, because that's what it looked like. I actually preferred Hundertwasser's grass-covered spiral.
At the risk of steering the discussion away from Auckland for a moment (shock horror...), I don't actually loathe Te Papa: it's just such a wasted opportunity.
I'm quite familiar with the design of Te Papa and the processes that led to its construction and once you know, some of the concepts behind it are quite interesting
There are interesting parts of it, and interesting concepts behind it, but generally you either have to be an architect or have the plans explained to you in order to grasp them, so they're not accessible to the general public.
but there's just simply two many ideas, and it's all a little bit of the sum adding up to a lot less than its parts... no risks, trying to please everyone.
Agreed. IMO, the main problem is that it got stuck between two specific ideas of what a museum should be: a grand, iconic, memorable yet aloof whole; and a complex, disparate, contradictory yet democratic assemblage. The former would have gone for the Bilbao effect, and the latter would have sacrificed that for a messy yet vital diversity. But what we got was an aloof mess.
So, my main beef with Te Papa is not architectural so much as urbanistic. It needs to open up to the water and the city, rather than being a hostile bunker. The proposed UN Studio extension between it and Waitangi Park should help a bit, but it also needs an opening somewhere along the northern promenade, perhaps by the observation deck between Bush City and the pond. The southern edge could be improved by having mixed use buildings (offices, housing, retail) built over the carparks that separate it from Cable St.
But ideally, I would have preferred it if the original concept had been a "museum quarter" rather than a single musuem. A science museum, history museum, art gallery etc, all as separate buildings in different styles, but with active edges, and with public streets and squares between them. Allow some other uses among them so it doesn't become a "cultural ghetto", and it would engage with the city and the water while providing diversity plus openness.
What does all that have to do with the Auckland Stadium? Not a lot, to be honest, since that will be dominated by one huge and specific use, and it can't be broken down to form a street network at a human scale. But what you can do is avoid the bunker effect by building in other uses at street level. Some of them might fit in with the sporting theme (sports bars, gyms, squash courts, offices for sports administrators, sportswear shops, a sports museum, physiotherapists and spas), but some of them could just be ordinary shops and cafes or general-purpose functions spaces. It it's going to be next to the city, it has to be populated on more than events days.
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Think about what you might want from a stadium. You want to get there, watch the game, and get far away as quickly as possible. ... When the game is over: a quite stroll along the waterfront and perhaps a dining experience with 60,000 other people flooding out of the place looking for somewhere to pee? No thanks.
But that's exactly what a lot of stadium-goers do want to do: go out and enjoy the victory (or commiserate in defeat) after the game. Despite the Wellington Stadium being nearly 1km from the nearest bars and 2km from the main nightlife district, people pour out of the game and (far from wanting to get away) head off in search of a good time. Then again, Wellingtonians seem to have retained the use of their legs, and know how to have a good time in public.
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Has Keith Locke actually seen the area he describes as "Auckland's beautiful waterfront"?
Sigh. That's exactly the sort of comment we keep getting about Wellington waterfront. How dare they propose replacing our beautiful carparks and tin sheds with something people might actually use!
Having said that, a stadium of that size is a damn hard thing to get right in an urban context. If they do manage to get the ground level animated by bars and function rooms (and shops and gyms and all sorts of other things that could work), then it would be fantastic, and exactly the sort of thing that a waterfront needs. I just hope that those sort of urban issues don't get dropped in the panic to get it finished on time.
Comparisons to the Wellington Stadium aren't really accurate, since ours isn't on the "waterfront" - it's separated from the harbour by an arterial road and all the sheds and stacked logs of the working port. However, it does go to show that the edge of the CBD, beside a main transport node, is exactly where a stadium should go. Because of its still-industrial environs, it hasn't attracted the sort of public uses around the edge that the Auckland one is supposed to, but there are at least some workplaces (Otago University sports research, I think) tucked under the stands to show that it's at least vaguely feasible.
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it looks like a goddam haemorrhoid cushion
Sigh. It seems to me that any proper stadium (as opposed to the random collections of stands that make up most of our sports grounds) is going to be roughly toroidal. Thus, it'll be pretty easy for any detractor to liken it to a caketin, or bedpan, or haemorrhoid cushion. Not being particularly familiar with any of the above, it looks to me a bit like a ... stadium.
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Eden park is the spiritual home of Auckland rugby
And Athletic Park was the spiritual home of Wellington rugby. We got over it.
It will take more than some photo-shopped stadiums overlayed over the current wharf to convince me of its design merits.
From what I gather, there hasn't been a design per se yet, just conceptual renderings to show that yes, you can squeeze some sort of stadium into the space (sort of). Can anyone confirm that?
And if we f**k up another world cup bid by not completing a stadium, we will NEVER be given another chance, even if the AB's win every world cup till year 3000.
Very true. From my relative outsider's perspective, Carlaw Park sounded like a good idea, but it's hard to tell, and I think the waterfront location is way better than Eden Park (we've got to stop building stuff randomly all over the place). So I'm happy to support the waterfront idea in the spirit of getting things done.
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everyone can enjoy. Not just sports enthusiasts.
Or music enthusiasts: one of the best things about not having the stadium at Nimbyville, I mean Eden Park, is that it'll be easier to have concerts there.
As for "decent public open space", the only open space that I really enjoyed when I lived in Auckland was Vulcan Lane. Is that still any good?
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Tell 70,000 people to make their way to Auckland's waterfront by a certain time. Once they are all there tell them to go home again.
Hadyn, I agree with Che on this one: the whole idea is that they don't have to go home again, at least not straight away. The idea is to give people something to do afterwards by having them downtown. That's assuming that Auckland actually has a downtown now, of course.
That also means that some bars will probably resort to the trick Matterhorn played during the Golden Oldies: put out a "closed for private function" sign. The regulars know better and go in anyway, and most of the fans would probably enjoy themselves more down in the local sports bar.
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agree with Che's enthusiasm for Park and Ride.
Or (shudder!) Walk and Ride? That's probably going to be impossible in Auckland until it reaches the density of proper cities, and that's not going to happen any time soon.
But why not put special shuttle buses on when there's a game at the stadium? Wellington does.