Dushko Bogunovich, Associate Professor of Urban Design at Unitec, here outlines his Four Conditions for Success for a positive and considered outcome to the National Stadium issue looking at positioning, design, scale and environmental impact.

Image: An eco-tech vision for Auckland's Tank Farm produced at Unitec by ScALA students.
(Team leader: Cuan Forsyth-King)Dushko Bogunovich, Associate Professor of Urban Design at Unitec, here outlines his Four Conditions for Success for a positive and considered outcome to the National Stadium issue looking at positioning, design, scale and environmental impact.

Image: An eco-tech vision for Auckland's Tank Farm produced at Unitec by ScALA students.
(Team leader: Cuan Forsyth-King)Dear Chairman Mike Lee, Mayor Dick Hubbard,

Regarding the stadium dilemma.

The Government's 'strong preference' for the CBD waterfront site is understandable. It wants to back a project which will assist in NZ economic transformation towards an 'economy that is more productive, innovative and export-led'. Correctly, the Government sees Auckland's waterfront as the nation's shop window and therefore the best opportunity - particularly at the time of the Rugby World Cup - to 'showcase' what this small and distant country is about and what it is capable of doing.

This is a clever global media plot but will it deliver? I suspect it will not, once it becomes obvious that the stadium:

1) is in the wrong place;

2) looks like just another stadium;

3) is too big to be economical (used often enough)

4) fails to satisfy the key condition of the new global economy - environmental sustainability = eco-technological innovation

(1) The current proposal - the siting of the stadium on the Cpt Cook and Marsden wharves - is really bad. It is expensive ($120 M for the platform only); it obscures the views of, and from, the last remaining heritage row of the original Auckland commercial waterfront (four extraordinary late 19th century buildings); and it is of grotesquely different scale and style from that heritage complex. It will be remembered as one the worst urban design atrocities in Auckland ever, and will easily beat the mistakes of the Jonh Banks era, when the words 'urban design' were not even in use.

A far better site would be the south end of the Bledisloe Wharf (as proposed by the Heart of the City group), or even better (but obviously unlikely) right in the middle of the wharf. Here, the stadium would be in the company of the modern Scene Apartments complex, which have the right scale, layout and distance from a project of this size and function. In addition, there is a particular logic and justice to this combination. Some time ago, the Scene Apts ruined the harbour views for hundreds of residents and workers in the NE CBD when the apartments' developer Tony Gapes, with the approval of the city planning department, created a wall between the city and that part of the waterfront. The best way to correct this terrible urban design mistake (apart from demolishing all three blocks) would be to use the 'wall' as the backdrop for something equally big.

Of course, the Port will not like this idea. But the argument that the Port needs the wharf (as well as the old wharves west of it) should be seen in the context of the Government's economic transformation strategy. Surely that strategy is not about stimulating more imports (which is apparently what the Port mostly does). The strategy is about ending this country having a disastrous current deficit and stop bleeding money because it has a huge overseas debt and too much outside investment and paying off huge interest and dividends to foreign banks and shareholders. Let's put Mr Vazey's warning about 'disruption' of the port activity' in the right perspective and ponder whether a little disruption of the imports of petrol-guzzling first and second-hand cars might actually be good for our national economy. If it turns out that the importance of an efficient port is crucial for a distant, maritime country (especially in an era when water transport is likely to become preferred over air cargo), then let's give the Port another license to reclaim more seabed for another wharf in the NE direction. (Surely, the Govt's new friend Fletcher Bdg would cheer to this decision as a fair compensation for losing the contract to build the mega-platform on the Cpt Cook-Marsden wharves site.)

The next three points are about the design of the stadium - about how it should work and look like other things that have to do with the human gift of sight and hearing, not just watching rugby; how it should be 60,000-seats-big for only a short time; and how it should generate resources, instead of being a drain on them.

(And here I should acknowledge the excellent opinion column by John Roughan in The Herald on 11-11-2006, p A25, where he correctly stressed the importance of good design, writing that "'Stadium Aotearoa' could become this Government's most popular legacy if the design is right....")

(2) First, about the design of stadiums and about design in general. When a house is designed like a house it is likely to be a good (functional) one. But it will hardly surprise or enchant anybody. The same is true with all architectural typologies - schools, office buildings, hotels, theatres, stadiums. This is the secret of such absolute global design successes like the Sydney Opera House or the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Neither did opera theatres look like that until Sydney, nor did museums look like that until Bilbao. So here lies the essence of the Warren&Mahoney spectacular failure to win the hearts of Aucklanders (and the rest of the nation nation, I suspect) - their computer simulations look so predictably like a stadium.

The 'stadium' needs to be much more than a sports stadium, even more than a performance venue. It should be Auckland's 'permanently docked cruise-ship', with spectacular views of both the harbour and the city and parts of it open 24/7. It should look like an albatross, oceanliner, seastar, dolphin, pohutukawa, volcano, solar power plant, flying saucer... anything but a stadium! Mr Mallard, get a different architect.

(3) My second point about design is about the stadium size. It is unlikely that Auckland will need a 60,000-seat stadium more than once in a decade. A venues of that size would be a financial burden, on top of already being a visual burden on the Akl CBD and waterfront. Therefore, the stadium should most likely be actually designed for 30,000 to 40,000 spectators as the permanent version, while the 2011 issues should be - somehow - constructed with a temporary layer, or side, providing the additional 30,000 to 20,000 seats for the WRC weeks only. A bit tricky, but it has been done before (see Brian Rudman's column on 10 Nov, citing examples of 'collapsible stadiums' in the London and Chicago bids for the Olympics).

(4) The third design point is about environmental sustainability. If indeed we envisaged a 'stadium that does not look like a stadium', then it might as well, not necessarily look, but certainly perform like a power plant. In the just dawned era of a carbon-constrained economy it is very trendy, politically correct, ecologically wise, and often economically smart, to propose, design, build and operate facilities which are not a burden on the city infrastructure. On the contrary, if the new project can actually contribute to the city grid, the better its public image, prospect of getting quick resource consent, long-term financial health, and resilience to surprise events such as blackouts. This too is a tall technological agenda. But isn't accomplishing a project like this - a sort of an Apollo Project for the NZ industry - the kind of challenge that Mr Mallard has in mind with his economic transformation agenda? Also, this feature (generating power and harvesting water) would help answering the criticism about having a strucfure that is closed most of the time sitting useless on prime real estate.

Lastly, I have recently written against the waterfront site in principle (and in favour of the Carlaw Park site, which I still believe is worth consideration). I now see some advantages to the waterfront site. In general I support the siting of future important public projects along Auckland's spectacular waterfront. Indeed, what this city has between Pt Erin and Achilles Pt is unsurpassed in world terms; it now deserves a necklace of top-class design projects that would complement the extraordinary natural landscape. These projects cannot be only about what we Aucklanders and New Zealanders think is important and interesting. It must be of interest and relevance to the world too. In these times of an overwhelmingly urbanised world and massive global mobilisation over the climate change issue, the best way to capture the attention of the global audience is to offer a design that will be an icon of the right relationship of buildings with their urban context and with the wider regional and global ecosystem.

I hope this is useful to both councils as they go about deliberating Auckland's response to the Government.

Dushko Bogunovich, PhD
Associate Professor of Urban Design
ScALA - School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture
Unitec Institute of Technology