Commentary by Dr Dushko Bogunovich

Stage 2 of the Queens Wharf Design Competition is almost over: the eight finalists have submitted their proposals and these are now on display in the Union Fish Co building and on the queenswharf.org.nz  website.


The ball is now in the judges’ and ministers’ court. By 8 November they are expected to announce the winner. 


In the meantime, here is a forecast. How reliable? Well, let’s bear in mind that the whole process of ‘opening the Red Gates’ throughout year 2009 has been way more about politics, money and egos, than about good design, or about putting Auckland once and for all on the design map of the world.


This forecast can be summarised in a simple formula: “0-1-2-3-4”:


• Zero clear winners.


• One judge above all: the all-powerful dollar.


• Two strong favourites.


• Three good ideas.


• Four losers (sadly).


Let’s see where these numbers come from.


0. 
Based on just a couple of hours of wrestling with the really knotty queenswharf.org.nz website (is the mess on that website deliberate?), and then another couple of hours staring at the exhibits at the Union Fish building (also strangely scrambled in terms of who did what and at what stage of the competition… you get it?), I have come to the most important conclusion: there can be no clear winner here. There isn’t a single project that fully exploits the amazing potential of the hottest site in the country.


1. 
The reason for the above is not lack of urban designers’, architects’ and landscape architects’ ambition and imagination. The 237 entries, 25 EOI from aspiring teams, and 38 ‘ideas’ have delivered a real fireworks of creativity and aspiration. The reason is the stingy budget. And the appriately impoverished project brief. All that the three levels of government could allocate for the execution of this project – one of the most important and visible public projects in NZ’s history – was $47 million. This in a nation where the government is happy to budget $1,800 million for  building tunnels where there are no hills (but there are creeks and waterfalls) and major banks owe $2,000 million in unpaid taxes.
Having in mind such a meagre budget, it is actually amazing what the eight teams have been able to offer. 
It is also depressingly clear that the best ideas are likely to be culled, due to ‘lack of funding’.


2.  
The two strong favourites are actually three! Believe it or not, three entries – 01, 04 and 08 – make two design concepts. How come? Well, it’s simple – have a look at the entries 01 and 08 and you will see for yourself that, in terms of the master plan, they are identical. The only difference is that 01 (“100% Public”) is focused on year 2012 and the RWC stage, while 08 (“Beyond the Brief, Legacy Evolves”) places emphasis on a ‘legacy building’ at the NW corner of the wharf to be built around 2020.
Strange competition rules trigger strange strategies of how to win. Or clever strategies, you might say. In this case, it certainly is not against the rules that one concept could win both under the banner of shortlisted five design ideas and under the banner of the three shortlisted design consortia. If anything, winning on both accounts makes this group a truly convincing aspirant.
But the point of this commentary is not to comment on business strategies. We are interested in design strategies. The strengths of this twin entry (01+08) are multiple: the idea that buildings can be landscapes (i.e. their roof public space, not a footprint forever lost to a building); its grasp that QW is not a symmetrical entity; its excellent positioning of what, on a daily basis, would probably be the wharf’s most popular space – the ‘Queens Cove’ water basin – along the western edge and in fro
nt of the impressive Terminal building; its provision of an elaborate events space, including a waka landing, at the end of the wharf.
The other strong entrant is 04. It has by far the most interesting architectural propostion. It comes in the shape of the very elegant, clean-energy-inspired roof over the Cruise Ship Terminal, which also poses as a giant verandah on the way from Queen Street to the wharf. This would truly deliver the design spectacle that the public so craves. It would also fulfil one of the main goals in Auckland’s official Waterfront Strategy 2040 – to showcase sustainable design – which the organisers of the competition, in their appalling failure to see where the world of design is going globally, have almost dropped out of the brief. 
There are other good points in both entries but the above are the key strategical moves that make them qualify as potential winners.
Unfortunately, both proposals can be criticised too. The 01/08 for its naive take on environmental sustainablity (reiterating the myth  of ‘compact cities’ as a precondition for sustainability, which even if true, has little clout in sprawling Auckland and little relevance for the design of this site). The 04 one has a rigidly straight and symmetrical layout. Also, both of them borrow too much from foreign models which have already established their iconic presence on the world design stage. Specifically:
- 08’s ‘legacy building’ mimicks the new Opera on the Oslo waterfront, and its terminal-as-public-terrain somewhat resembles similar buildings in Amsterdam and Yokohama; 
- 04’s giant PV verandah above the cruise terminal is an obvious derivative of the Pergola Fotovoltaica on Barcelona’s northern waterfront. 
Nothing wrong in principle with emulating proven templates of good architecture, but in this case, when the search is obviously for something special and unique, the copy-cat approach will never make Auckland a leader, and always a follower.


3. 
Perhaps the greatest success of the Second Stage has been in making three important ideas about Queens Wharf very clear:
• That the wharf, despite its straight and elongated shape – which led so many entrants to strategically conceive, and verbally and graphically argue, their design concept with axes this way and that – is an essentially asymmetrical site. Realising this, opens a golden path to, first, zoning the wharf properly, and second, laying out its overall formal composition as a pattern in the ground. It has to be said that the entry 01 does this best. 
It should be also said that an additional dimension to this fundamental assymetry is Auckland’s relationship with the harbour/gulf/sea/ocean – the geometry of which is present even today in the often funny contours of various wharves and piers – is the subtle presence of curved ‘desire lines’ in the site. Only one entrant – 05 -recognised and acknowledged this. And cleverly named it ‘the line of tension and motion’.
• That the wharf is the best place in all of NZ to make a statement about the world’s biggest headache – the looming global environmental disaster – and the world’s best bet of how to avoid it – with clean technology and seriously green buildings. In this regard, entries 04 and 05 are way ahead of everybody else.
• That the best position for a prominent (‘iconic’) building – to be built one day when Auckland feels rich enough for an architectural extravaganza on its main wharf – is in the NW corner of the wharf. Apparently this was obvious only to the 08 entry. Unfortunately, while they figured out the right place, they provided a wrong design. The 08’s proposed ‘legacy building’ is not only unnecessarily limiting itself to the rectangular shape of Shed 11, but is also tilting the wrong way. Apparently, in their quest to out-do Snoeheta’s signature ‘drama of sinking’ (invented in Alexandria, for the library, recycled in Oslo for the opera), the architects forgot what the real show is at the end of a stroll on Queens Wharf. It is not more views of the harbour landscape, but the architectural spectacle of the CBD when one turns around.


4. 
Simple maths tells us that ‘3 entries with 2 very good concepts, plus 1 also-ran’ make a total of four entries that are worth further attention. That leaves four that aren’t. This is sad on several accounts. One, because they all have put in a big effort. Two, at least one of them (03) looked quite promising in the first round and then, apparently under pressure from judges’ criticism for being ‘unrealistic’, pruned its best elements and became a pale shade of itself. Three, even after the second round it remains a mystery why some of the designs were shortlisted in the first round – against the judges’ own severe criticism of their flaws.


But don’t rule them out! This is only a forecast. What will really happen is what the CEOs and ministers decide in their ultimate financial wisdom by the 8 November.

By Dushko Bogunovich