KEY POINTS:
All over the world, waterfronts are changing. Once home to industry, waterfront areas now boast a wide range of commercial and recreational activities with open space, piazzas, plazas, promenades and planting.
Auckland's waterfront is the jewel in the city's crown. Why tarnish this area with a monolithic, inward-looking stadium?
No matter where it was placed on the waterfront - the finger wharves or Wynyard Point/Tank Farm - a 60,000-seat stadium would consume everything around it and create a significant barrier between the Central Business District, the city's parks and its hinterland.
The footprint needed for a stadium of this size, as well as its surrounding infrastructure - pedestrian areas, bus drop-offs, transportation, linkages and servicing - is huge and the building is functionally inward-looking.
Stadiums tend to have solid exterior walls because of the shape and sightlines of the tiered seating and to mitigate the noise from within. There are few active edges where people can connect and little opportunity for a demonstration of what happens within the stadium.
An important aspect of good urban design is to make the city interactive and to demonstrate how buildings work and the activities of those within. That is why cafes and retail are so successful on the edges of streets.
Westpac Stadium in Wellington is cited as an example of a waterfront stadium. It is a great building and a great experience, but it is not on the waterfront.
It inhabits the redundant eastern zone of Wellington's railyards and is separated from the waterfront by a major distribution road and vast amounts of industrial waterfront land and the container terminal.
In my view there is no place on the waterfront for the stadium. My sketches demonstrate the ideal of retention and development of our heritage, versus the effect of putting a stadium on the wharves or at Wynyard Point.
I, like many Aucklanders, have seen the proposals for redevelopment of Eden Park and I think the design is superb. It retains the best of the existing and develops new facilities and pedestrian promenades for 60,000 - all for an affordable $300 million.
The waterfront proposals, which would include significant land reclamation or wharf extensions, would cost at least $500 million, excluding the cost of procuring the site.
Eden Park is located in an established residential area and the relationship of sporting activities and the community is an important one.
I visited Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane last year as a member of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects national awards jury. Suncorp is in a residential area and its public promenades are placed to connect with access points and transportation so the stadium is part of the urban fabric of Brisbane. It is done with considerable skill and is an asset to the city. We gave it an award.
The proposals for Eden Park include significant connections to the train system at Kingsland. For the most recent All Black test at Eden Park, we travelled by train from Britomart and it was great, with a leisurely stroll to our seats and our fish and chips.
Let's stop these crazy ideas of wrecking the waterfront. There is no way it could be completed in time for the Rugby World Cup.
I know about designing large-scale, fast-track projects. I designed the Sky Tower and SkyCity, and I feel confident in saying that a waterfront stadium with all its platforms of infrastructure cannot be achieved in the time available.
Quite apart from the time issue, the waterfront is the wrong place. My drawings tell the story.
* Gordon Moller is principal of Moller Architects and has extensive experience in large-scale public buildings. He is also co-convener of Auckland City's urban design panel.
