It's worth noting that you can't legislate for an "iconic" building. Unlike validating legislation say, which can be drawn up and rammed through while compliant allies examine their baubles, an iconic building does not pop out of the legislative hat to order. An iconic building -- one with with this sporting function, in this location, in the time frameset by this particular bunch political appointees -- has few if any precedents, and the scheme proposed by Warren and Mahoney for what is an iconic position in Auckland's harbour is very, very far from iconic. Indeed, for abject banality it rivals even the similarly trumpeted white elephant that is Auckland's council-designed-and-built Ayatollah Centre for Auckland's Ayatollah Square, where it sits there still as a monument to design-by-politics. [See a video presentation here in which the government stadium itself is mercifully lit up so as to blind the viewer to the exact details of the proposal.]
So how would one go about achieving an iconic building in such an iconic location?
Perhaps the best and most fruitful example lies in how Sydney acquired its own iconic building for its own harbour in a location that has many similarities to that currently under debate. Rather than simply try and buy an iconic building to order, the New South Wales government instead commissioned an international competition to find something strong enough to suit their stunning downtown harbour site.
What they came up with a year later were a hundred or so designs of what was described as stunning mediocrity, and one that stood out immediately as a work of genius: the celebrated Opera House by Danish architect Jorn Utzon (that's one of his competition sketches that won it for him pictured at left, of the stairway"between the two halls"). The result shows what is possible with imagination on a site not a million miles in form from that so horribly traduced by architects Warren and Mahoney Limited. (Yes, there were problems in construction, most of them also politically-driven.)I would suggest a swift and well-briefed competition here to try and achieve the same end. It may be objected we don't have one more year to waste, but with CAD and information technology what it is today, surely a much shorter period could be achieved for what -- if it goes ahead -- is a site far too important for a modern-day cousin of the Ayatollah Centre. Or for a bedpan.
2 comments:
The proposed waterfront stadium site will never have an "iconic" building on it as it will be surounded by Port of Auckland operation (container cranes, ships, container stacks, straddle carriers, truck and train movements, etc.).
While the Sydney Opera House sits in splendid isolation on a spit into the harbour with the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Rocks area as a backdrop. Scenically a very striking location. A vista the proposed waterfront stadium will never have unless you remove Port of Auckland operations to another site.
Sydney is fortunate that the public use areas are all in front of the bridge while their port operations are behind the bridge. They are also fortunate that they have alternative commercial wharf development opportunities in the next bay down the coast (whose name escapes me at the moment - the one the airport juts into).
In Auckland we dont have this opportunity. Shifting Port facilities to Tauranga is an option but would see a major part of Sulpher Point needed for container handling facilities. Marsden Point is not an option for Port Development as the deepest part is only large enough for two medium sized tankers. Getting a fully serviced container facility up there would require major dredging, gobble up twenty odd hectares of prime real estate land at One Tree Point, the construction of a rail extension from Oakleigh to Marsden Wharf, an upgrade of the North Auckland rail line to handle the extra train traffic, and have hundreds of extra container trucks on the already clogged SH1 over the Brenderwyns and points South.
Iconic it will only ever be if the Port facilites are removed.
What about a replica of the Colosseum? If we built it right we can even have fleet spectables inside. Throw in a few lions to eat politicians, and I'm sure Aucklanders will rally behind it.
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