John Coop: Simple formula for success starts with good design

Opinion

In all its complexity, infrastructure has a simple underlying truth. It's encouraging to see it beginning to emerge in New Zealand.

It goes like this: Good design at the outset results in smoother processes which means faster and better outcomes with less risk.

It's a simple formula, applied successfully in infrastructural development in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the US, for decades.

It's a formula that ensures design is not merely a flourish late in the infrastructural development process.

Significantly, too, it's a formula that works independent of a country's scale or resources.

It's widespread in countries where infrastructure is regarded as fundamental to economic, urban and social growth - where airports, bus and ferry interchanges and rail systems are more than practical necessities, they're a valued part of the physical and social landscape.

Locally, thousands of motorists and pedestrians see an example every day. When completed 100 years ago, Grafton Bridge was a small marvel in design-led infrastructural development - innovative, simple, highly effective, sculptural. The test is that it's as valued today as it was 100 years ago.

A useful international example of best practice "good initial design = better processes = faster and better outcomes = less risk" is Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park project.

Taking what might have otherwise been the brownest of brownfield sites - a six-lane motorway and heavy railway line - the project humanised this not by hiding it but by developing it as public realm as much as an infrastructural necessity. In a "front of house" location within the city, the difference between a carefully designed public space and purely functional infrastructure would have been enormous.

You can be sure the Olympic Park, with its public access, noise walls, sculpture, bridges, and landscaping was the result of the earliest possible collaboration between the various city interests, utility companies, funders, and designers bent on a wonderful and surprising result.

Here in New Zealand there are signs of "green shoots" in this regard. Here are three examples of promising design-focused infrastructure developments:

* The Christchurch Transport Interchange aims to address suburbanisation's sapping of the city centre's energy. In a city once known for its intimacy and well proportioned scale, this project aims to hard-wire the centre to people's daily lives. Rather than meeting solely a practical objective as a bus exchange, the concept plans are part of an integrated vision for the regeneration of the urban fabric, including a downtown of walkways and lanes - places to be discovered and nurtured. It's a result of thinking about more than transport considerations - about what people experience, how they feel on arrival and why they should wish to stay.

* Wellington Airport's new international terminal. People find airports oppressive because they're anonymous, retail-centric and difficult to experience on one's own terms. The new terminal design has created much debate - just as its commissioners wanted. They're creating something entirely consistent with what makes Wellington a great city - rather than seeing the terminal solely as "infrastructure" they see it as a cornerstone design marker of what Wellington is about. The terminal will be as much about Wellington as the Oriental Bay fountain and Cuba Mall water sculpture - a public place, idiosyncractic, eccentric even - and so much more than infrastructure as it is generally understood in this country.

* The Victoria Park tunnel project. Although still in its design phase, this is a current local example of collaboration between builders, engineers, landscape architects, Auckland City Council's Urban Design team representatives, architects, and planners. Spanning 15 lanes of traffic, the project's pedestrian footbridge promises to be as stimulating to the hundreds of thousands of motorists travelling under it daily, as for the local residents and pedestrians who will reach the waterfront and the city via it.

Each of these projects recognises "the client" is, ultimately, every New Zealander and visitor to this country. They consider with great care urban design and setting, seeking harmony between urban design, engineering, budget and architecture.

They seek to avoid ornamental or tokenistic design elements - the public art "sticking plaster" treatment - and to create a design story that increases people's sense of ownership and understanding of the outcome. And they consider whole-of-life implications regarding costs and benefits.

This spirit of collaboration that unites them will lead to outcomes that enhance the environment, not simply sit astride - or dominate it.

When you consider that Brand New Zealand is built on the unspoilt quality of our natural beauty, combined with the accessibility and character of our people, this is critically important.

We thus have more to gain and to lose than most countries in getting our infrastructure right (or wrong). The examples above may not quite be Melbourne City Links or Millau Viaducts, but they're a very encouraging step in the right direction.

* John Coop is principal and executive director of Warren and Mahoney, one of New Zealand's largest architectural practices.