Auckland Waterfront - North Wharf Promenade and Silo Park

Full description

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: The redevelopment of the Auckland Waterfront transformed a forlorn industrial and maritime precinct into a mixed-use precinct, and included the redesign of North Wharf Promenade and Silo Park. Perry Lethlean, as a Director of Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL), led the implementation of this project in association with Wraight and Associates. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: TCL developed an alternative design approach to the typical erasure of waterfront memory. Underpinning the design are two key moves: retention and enhancing of fishing and maritime industries form the focus of new public experiences; and interpreting the site's archaeology of patterns and materiality to inform a new public landscape. The design drew upon the pattern language, infrastructure and the mythology of place. This project demonstrates Lethlean's contributions to contemporary public space design that connect to a site's context, its specificity and nuances, to elicit meaning and interpretive experience for the public. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: At the 8th International Biennial of Landscape Architecture in Barcelona, this project received the prestigious 2014 Rosa Barba Landscape Prize, which recognises the world's best in landscape architecture from the past five years. It also won: 2014 Australian Institute of Landscape Architecture (AILA) National Award for Urban Design; 2012 World Architecture News Urban Regeneration Award; 2012 New Zealand Urban Design Award for Built Project; 2012 Washington Waterfront Center Annual Honor Award; 2012 AILA Victoria Urban Design Excellence Award; and 2012 Resene Total Colour Landscape Award. It received critically reviews in international and local professional journals Landscape Architecture Magazine (US), Landscape Architecture Australia and Architecture Australia, amongst others.