seven
seven
a masterplan for downtown auckland
This design process began long before the semester commenced, in the reading and re-reading of Raymond Carver’s short stories. It is through a restrained style that each story is told and through which a character or characters is defined over the course of only a few pages. It was these stories that lingered in my mind when we were first tasked with creating a narrative for the Downtown site. The inherent brevity of short stories enabled me to create seven characters each with a unique perspective and a different association to the site. Through this process a focus emerged; a decision to create places that allowed for the possible intertwining of these characters disparate stories.
The Masterplan 1:1000 Aerial View 1:1000 Ground Level Plan 1:1000 Underground Plan
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The Plaza Excerpt Formal Entrance on Queen Street Terraces adjacent to Customs Street Sculpture Garden
Running from Lower Albert through to Queen Street, the plaza is intended as a new focal point for Downtown Auckland. The large scale of the plaza is what makes the design both bold and monumental. As reclamation of private land for public use, the plaza is intended to not only beautify the city but also create a new civic centre for Downtown. It is ideally located along the waterfront and at the heart of Auckland transport. While the raised nature of the plaza facilitates the pedestrian movements from Quay to Queen and Lower Albert through to Britomart Train Station, it is primarily a place to rest. Slow terraced steps lead up to the Plaza, which provides a raised view of both the Harbour and the surrounding Historic buildings. The plaza itself is left relatively bare, a reprieve from the density of the city. It has as adornments only trees, benches, a glass basin and a monument, but each has its significance and purpose. For the trees it is simply shade and for the glass basin a method of dispersing light through the underground. The monument stands at the centre of the plaza, over fifty metres tall in representation of Tane Mahuta. The monument a reiteration of Michael Parekowhai’s scheme for the downtown works that still remain. The associated myth of Tane is well known and appropriate in the monument’s separation of the plaza and the Underground.
The Underground Excerpt The Library The Food Hall The Baths The Gallery Circulation The Performance Hall Lounge The Large Performance Hall The Small Performance Hall Gymnasium The Place of Worship Circulation Underground Circulation
When it came to imagining the underground, it was the short stories that led me to imagine a series of smaller more comprehensible spaces; each simply designed and pared back to focus on the most important spatial elements of minimalism – light, materiality, scale and proportion. While each space remains its own entity – specifically lit and composed within the grid – they are all connected by the labyrinthine circulation spaces. The circulation acts as yet another space to encounter another character or through which to arrive somewhere you had not intended on going but a place you are content to stay.
The series of spaces that fill the underground were programmed to both enable the interactions between the characters but also to create a sense of belonging within the city. This sense of belonging emerging from the creation of spaces that allow for stories to intertwine through shared interests whether they are spiritual, intellectual, cultural or physical. The entire scheme is without retail space for although profitable it has the tendency to divide demographics and what remains here are spaces that exist without need for profit and which are inclusive rather than exclusive.
The Structure Excerpt 1:500 Section
The plaza runs from Lower Albert to Queen Street for three reasons: to allow daylight into the area; to maintain the pre-existing axis lines of Galway Street and Tyler Street; and to reduce the weight of construction over the pathway of the three train paths below the site. While the plaza is able to distribute its weight evenly across the vaulted tunnels of the train, the acoustics of the train path require a careful layering of materials to reduce both low and high frequency sound transmitting through to the spaces above. The layers comprise of concrete arches, soil, hard fill, insulation, sand and a concrete platform.
Both the plaza and the underground are predominantly made from raw stone, white washed concrete and glass. The exposed nature of the materials necessitates bespoke construction including the construction of the monument. The monument is a precast concrete structure reinforced with steel and buried into a concrete footing to enable it to act like a cantilever keeping the weight balanced in the windy conditions.
The works of John Pawson reflect the beauty that can be achieved in simple design. In his own words, Pawson reflects that architecture must be first and foremost about the creating of contexts for the rituals of its users’ lives, whether the emphasis is on the civic, the domestic, the social or the emotional. It would seem that it is in the occupation of a space that its success is defined.
Through the creation of these many varied spaces it is hoped that the stories of these characters become increasingly intertwined, whether that occurs in the plaza, the underground, or in the spaces in between. It is a hopeful scheme but hopefully a scheme that is believable.