KEY POINTS:
COMPUTER-assisted design programmes seem to be so pervasive these days that you feel a little sorry for the handful of entrants in the Te Wero Bridge contest who have relied on good old-fashioned pen and inks and crayon.
Wandering through the 150 entries on display in the Britomart Station entrance hall, I rather missed the hand-drawn craziness we enjoyed seven years ago when the Auckland City Council held a similar contest to seek ideas for the redevelopment of the Britomart block.
Where's the Daliesque water clock that entertained us back then, or the replica colonial lighthouse? All these fancy design tools seem to have made contestants super-serious. Well, almost all, because there is humour, some intentional, some perhaps not, if you look hard enough.
The contest was to seek ideas for an "iconic opening bridge", budget $35 million or more, to link Te Wero Island in Viaduct Harbour with the Tank Farm redevelopment adjacent to Team New Zealand's headquarters. One zany entry features a great ferris wheel which instead of a series of hanging seating pods, has flat slabs instead, which vehicles drive on to.
The explanatory notes claim this allows boats to travel through without waiting while the cars and trucks, and presumably pedestrians, swing slowly overhead. I couldn't quite figure whether it went full circle and if so, how the bottom half of the wheel, complete with load, didn't whack the boats as it went underwater.
Another entry, more freehand cartoon than genuine competitor, I'm sure, provided some light relief with a series of alternatives, starting with "The Lock Of Auckland" which, in respect for Auckland's love of motoring, proposed a no-stop highway for traffic, with a straddle tower crossing it, up which a series of water-filled buckets carried boats up and over the bridge.
Alternatively, we could have "Extreme Life Auckland", the Te Wero Stunt crossing, which in tribute to New Zealand's place as the capital of adventure tourism, involved speed ramps approaching either side of the canal and turbo-charged buses "offered an exciting, unique experience" by flying across the gap while boats merrily floated back and forth.
OK, so it loses a little in the translation, but amid all the seriousness, a little light relief doesn't go amiss.
It was inevitable, I guess, that several entries seemed to echo the lacy illustration Auckland City floated in earlier visions it has portrayed for the area. Still, if there are only so many ways you can come up with for bridging a gap like this, it felt that everyone had been tried out - some more than once.
Acknowledging the past, there's a traditional carved waka on a swivelling pole, two koru-shaped arms, which rise up and down to bridge the gap, and a long palisade- like structure that seems to run from the CBD through to the Viaduct Basin. There's a giant squid you can drive across, and a Mammoth-like creature whose trunk acts as the roadway which you access under the hind legs.
Several were too complicated for me to fathom, one claiming to be the open bridge that never closes, which looked a bit like looking down on an oscillating washing machine in action. It's apparently never closed to pedestrians as it jiggles back and forth. Whether anyone would be brave enough to get on it is another thing.
Then there are a couple of bridges with semi-circular shaped carriage ways, which rise up to form an arch, when open, to allow boats to float through underneath. Apparently there's a similar style bridge in Britain.
As someone who wonders whether it wouldn't be simpler just to revive the historic old lifting bridge already there, and put a simple fixed structure across the gap, I still wonder whether the right question has been addressed with this contest.
It's certainly disappointing that few of the entries paid more than token regard for one of the few truly historic gems left on the waterfront. Not surprising, I guess, when they were told to concentrate elsewhere.
* The 150 entries can be viewed at Britomart until September 14.
