At the moment it’s easy to be despondent faced with wild inflation, the climate in crisis and war in the Middle East. It feels like a mirror image of the beginning of the last century when humans gave into their worst instincts and lost their collective mind.
However, I am grateful to be hard wired not to give in or get weighed down and creatively immobilised.
Instead, I seek refuge in my imagination, inspired often by Dada, a European avant-garde art movement of the 1930s that challenged the social norms by purposefully shocking, confronting and challenging the viewer. It concentrated on anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing norms in the arts by mashing up mediums. Armed with this mindset, I force myself to be lateral, imagine the unimaginable and consider that the impossible is possible.
So, while fantasising about redeveloping my small pocket of paradise in Westmere, I googled the words futuristic, nature inspired, city, NZ and boom!
Up came the astounding, recently completed Marisfrolg Campus in Shenzhen, China designed by Dunedin-based Fred and Damien of Architecture Van Brandenburg (AVB). An amazingly, spectacular, organic, leaf inspired building, seemingly weightless as it soars elegantly skyward despite its massive proportions. At 190,000m² the complex is almost six times the size of Te Papa and designed to capture rain that feeds landscaped ponds and waterways acting as a passive cooling system. The sort of building that really gets me excited.
It was clear that this firm had the team, the technology and the wisdom to handle big projects, much bigger than my modest ideas for a small urban marae. In fact, these guys have the special skills required to turn my beloved Auckland from the sad, broken, discordant pile it has become into an inspirationally connected place.
This discovery lifted my gloomy mood, then navigating the AVB website further, I clicked on the 3D fly through of the Dunedin waterfront and gasped. How lucky are we to have such visionaries in our country, yet when I asked Fred what has happened to the Dunedin project, he sighed and said, “It was all go, we had support from Provincial Growth Fund but then Covid happened and the council changed and the idea evaporated.”
OMG, perhaps Dunedin’s loss is Auckland’s gain? “Have you ever thought of redesigning Auckland?” He gave a small rye laugh, “I was in Auckland recently and gave a public talk about sustainable design. The Mayor Wayne Brown was in the audience.”
Bingo. Love him or hate him, Wayne Brown is a money man, he understands high finance and the mechanisms to unlock investment. He gets that there is no more money to be squeezed out of our rates, licences, fees and contributions. He knows that selling assets is deeply unpopular. He understands that central government has been bleeding our region dry for decades and avoiding reinvesting in critical infrastructure.
So my challenge to the Mayor and newly elected coalition government is to engage in genuine discussions to make good on the Super City failure and create a partnership that will unlock Auckland’s potential. Based on mutual respect and real co-operation, both central and local government need to agree on legislative and regulatory tools to enable investment that does not favour private profit leaving a legacy of public debt.
Whangarei is the only city that has managed to build a truly creative hub by the water – the Hundertwasser Art Centre. If you haven’t already been there I recommend you go. Meanwhile, Te Ara Tukutuku (binding the land and sea) is a project led by Auckland Council’s Eke Panuku in association with mana whenua to turn the contaminated industrial Tank Farm at the northern end of Wynyard Quarter into a 5ha park with an elevated headland, accessible bays and a rocky shoreline laced with native trees. Guardianship of natural resources – kaitiakitanga – is a core value that will be followed.
Next, we need to champion radical iconic public buildings imbued with the qualities unique to Aotearoa, like kotahitanga – a shared sense of belonging, perhaps then people will want to come back together to work and play rather than stay at home. Public consultation on Te Ara Tukutuku starts Oct 30 and runs for four weeks. (Lisa Prager, Westmere)
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Published: November 2023