KEY POINTS:
Three weeks ago Auckland city councillors invited the public to comment on the latest design proposal for Aotea Square.
Bearing in mind the significance of the place and the $80 million price tag, it is understandable that the council is reluctant to proceed before it gets some form of popular endorsement. I would be very surprised, however, if the council gets it.
The proposed design is visually bland, functionally crippled and financially misdirected.
Visually, the design cleverly avoids a particular style. Instead, it appears to follow "a strategy of random gestures" - the neat rows of faddish nikau, feigned terraces, pointless axes and painstakingly relocated artworks. However, it is not that this formalistic mishmash does not have a common agenda: most of the elements are dying to convince us that this place is unique.
The trouble with this desperate attempt at uniqueness and local identity is that, paradoxically, it ends up with the opposite result - Aotea Square now looks different in the same way most other civic squares lookdifferent in this increasingly homogenised world.
The global race for individuality and character has now reached that absurd phase where everybody is trying to be different using the same repertoire of decorative means.
In urban design and landscape architecture, these means tend to be pavement cladding, design motifs for outdoor furniture and lamp posts, water features, indigenous planting, and, inevitably, artworks.
No wonder the race has become boring and predictable. But that does not mean the race is off, or the global design audience is not watching. It means if we want their attention, we must offer more profound ideas.
My second point is about Aotea Square's design as a performance space. In this regard, the new design fails on at least two counts: it is flat and faces the wrong way.
Well-designed venues for listening and viewing have been following an archetype 3000 years old - the Greek theatre.
This classic model has curved, ascending seating, so that everybody can see and hear well. The proposed design, in its fixation on replacing the present flat roof with another flat (but safer) roof, ignores this simple, but perfect model.
What should be done, instead, is to create a series of terraces south of the square, like the ones proposed, but more of them, narrower, curved and climbing higher. So high, that they eventually reach the level of the first floor of the council administration building. At that level, a new entry plaza into the Council tower should be provided, while the current one should remain as the underground, taxi and VIP entrance.
Additional reasons for a terraced arrangement are that the shape of the natural terrain surrounding the area dictates ascent, and that this is the best way to connect the square's open space to the Aotea Centre's levels. Engaging the centre's lavish terraces as an organic part of the whole Aotea revamp exercise is crucial.
The proposed design dodges this task - it does include spending $10 million on the redesign of the east side of the Aotea Centre, but for what?
There are even more benefits from the steeply rising terraces: better containment of the presently rather vague square proper; a better first impression for visitors arriving from the main entry on Queen St; inclusion of the presently poorly-used roof terraces of the Aotea Centre into the pool of public and viewing space; a bigger Civic carpark; the northward orientation means audiences face the SkyCity cinema complex which already looks like a stage, and avoids the unpleasant glare of low-lying east or west sun.
Lastly, the proposed design is all about the ground. What about the sky?
Auckland, when compared to most other cities of the world, has often and rapidly changing weather. Auckland's sky is a constant spectacle. But sometimes this spectacle is a nuisance - rain, showers, wind, too much sun. So there is a need for some form of protection for the public.
One way to recognise, celebrate and, when necessary, moderate our temperamental weather would be to construct large-scale canopies across the proposed green terraces and along the edges of the square.
These canopies should be changing in size, shape, angle, location and colour, reflecting the changing weather and catering to social and cultural events.
This should be mechanised and controlled with weather-monitoring sensors and computers. It could be engineered using Auckland's world-wide recognised expertise in sailing technology.
Besides practicality and comfort, dealing with the weather at Auckland's most prominent civic place has a wider meaning. It gives us the opportunity to acknowledge global climate change.
Designwise, this could be done in purely symbolic terms, but also in substance, for example, designing into the amphitheatre a visible stormwater retention system and powering the night lighting of the square with solar-powered LEDs.
In conclusion, this latest proposal for Auckland's main civic and cultural hub does not go beyond decorative sentimentalism painted over a new roof.
This failure to engage the real design issues of the square can be primarily attributed to the lack of a master plan for the whole area.
And the lack of the master plan has to do with the lack of a development strategy, particularly the three free sites along Mayoral Drive.
Had there been a more contextual and strategic approach to both redevelopment and master planning, commercial benefits from the super-hot real estate within the area could have footed the bill for the public space.
Tens of millions of dollars could have been generated - enough to to fix the carpark roof, upgrade all the public space in true world-class fashion and, perhaps, even pay for the new theatre.
WINNER FIGHTS BACK
Dushko Bogunovich is associate professor of urban design at Unitec's School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Eight years ago he was part of a three-member team which won a design competition for Aotea Square.
The plan did not proceed - or, rather, was altered beyond recognition, step-by-step.
Says Bogunovich: "Sadly, after years of meetings, committees, reviews, consultations and design iterations, the clarity and robustness of the original concept have been totally lost. What we have on the table now is an utterly diluted, low-budget version of the original design.
"A depressing lesson of this long saga seems to be that it takes seven years of fruitless meetings and $770,000 in design fees, to rob one of the best urban design propositions in Auckland's history of its best features.
"This is the most spectacular urban design disaster I have seen from a close distance in my 30 years long international career as an architect, urban designer, town planner and academic."
EIGHT REASONS TO REDESIGN AOTEA SQUARE
1 To get a new, safer roof for events held at the square.
2 Increase the capacity of the Civic carpark building.
3 Provide an excellent, tiered auditorium for large events (which should keep The Edge happy).
4 Reduce the visual "leaking" of the current open space.
5 Break the current oversize open space into two distinct, better-scaled places.
6 Improve the view-frame you see arriving from around the Metro/Starbucks corner (which creates the first and probably most-lasting impression).
7 Create a new, smaller and more dignified entry plaza for the council tower.
8 Reintegrate the Aotea Centre's terraces into the overall public space, while expanding the centre, so it can become the Auckland/Aotea Convention Centre.
