Civic unions
Designs opening the hearts of our cities and bringing a new dynamic.
City squares across the country
Most great cities around the world have at least one iconic public space: a square or meeting place where all the best aspects of civic life play out. Great public spaces provide backdrops for festivals and celebrations, act as meeting points for families and friends, and become focal points for demonstrations and expressions of community values. Given the ad hoc way many of our cities have grown and evolved, New Zealand doesn’t have a great track record in this regard. With rare exceptions – Dunedin’s Octagon, for instance, or Cathedral Square in Christchurch before the earthquakes – our public spaces often feel more like they’re meant to be passed through than stopped in.
Thankfully, things are beginning to improve. With more of us taking up urban living and foregoing cars for bikes, public transport, and our feet, it’s becoming more important that our cities are pocked with great public spaces. At last, there are signs we might be on the right track.
Freyberg Place, Auckland
This central city redevelopment won a 2019 NZIA Award for Planning and Urban Design, and it’s easy to see way. The facelift is a collaboration between Stevens Lawson Architects, Isthmus Group, and artist John Reynolds. Its most striking feature is an amphitheatre of steps which, evoking lava flows and running at different angles, are more like interlocking bench seats than ways to traverse a slope. It has already become a hugely popular spot for lunching CBD workers.
The square’s recent official designation as a pedestrian mall was a no-brainer – 95 percent of submitters to Auckland Transport’s proposal supported limiting access to people and bikes only. With the stairs and creative planting, it’s easy to overlook that an essential aspect of the redevelopment is the restoration and improvements to the building that opens onto the square: the Ellen Melville Centre. Originally designed by Tibor Donner in the 1950s, it’s a modernist gem. It’s also now a community hub that can be hired by groups for meetings and events.
Kumutoto Pavilion, Wellington
Isthmus Group is on a roll – as well as their involvement with Freyberg Place, they’ve built Wellington’s Kumutoto Pavilion, which also won a 2019 NZIA award. Located on the waterfront, the structure is simultaneously open to the Wellington elements, while also providing much-needed shelter from the city’s notorious weather. Its beautiful timber roof is cantilevered over a long table where people can gather. It’s as much a sculpture as a building, the timber construction tying in directly with the material histories of the wharves on which it sits.
QEII Square, Auckland
In 2015, the sale of QEII Square to developer Precinct Properties as part of a deal to facilitate tunnelling for the City Rail Link was hotly debated. But that’s just one ingredient in a very complicated mix. Downtown Auckland is a pinch-point where numerous private and public interests collide: the redevelopments of Britomart; Queens Wharf and Ports of Auckland; the Ferry Terminal; the City Rail Link (CRL); and Precinct Properties’ massive Commercial Bay project. There are various renders online that show what QEII Square will look like. CRL’s website shows the space as a pedestrianised zone of tukutuku-inspired paving (the input of mana whenua has been an essential part of the CRL vision). Precinct Properties places more emphasis on Melbourne-style laneways. Quite what we end up with seems still up for grabs, but whatever it is, it’s bound to be better than what we had before: a wind tunnel and a tired shopping centre.
Cathedral Square, Christchurch
The devastation to Cathedral Square is the saddest loss of public space we’ve ever experienced – an area that was a
vital part of the city’s civic and spiritual fabric. In 2018, the public organisation Regenerate Christchurch released a proposal for an ambitious overhaul of the space, which included an elaborate, organically moulded pavilion and a significant investment in new paving and planting.
With costs estimated at between $60 and $80 million, it was always going to be a hard sell, and that’s proved to be the case. But Cathedral Square is at least getting a small redevelopment for now: a $3.6 million series of improvements, including new lighting, paving and planting, particularly in the square’s south-eastern corner, where the new Spark Building is being constructed. It will be a welcome breath of green space in the heart of the garden city.