It’s a pity the extreme storm that struck Auckland on the Monday night of 12 August didn’t wreak just a little more havoc than it did. It ripped across Queens Wharf, blowing out Shed 10’s roller doors and shredding the front of the Cloud’s plastic roof. If it had shredded the Cloud just a bit more, we might have been rid of this architectural blight on the city once and for all.

The building is a leftover – a legacy designed by Jasmax following a failed Queens Wharf design competition, erected as a temporary structure to accommodate an inner-city Fanzone during the Rugby World Cup 2011. It’s never been a particularly good event space thanks to its long, narrow footprint. It’s too hot in summer and too cold in winter. It’s also something of a contextual clanger, a show-off of parametric design and a triumph of marketing over its ridiculousness: more a sea slug than a cloud.

And it’s never really contributed public space amenity to the ‘people’s wharf’ – a slogan coined when the government bought the wharf with the council after it was purchased by the Auckland Regional Council in 2010 to become ‘party central’ for the Rugby World Cup. In truth, Queens Wharf has languished as a taxi drop-off zone and a service entrance for visiting cruise ships. A similar argument could be made about the adjacent Shed 10, which also offers little public amenity.

After the storm, Mayor Phil Goff visited the so-called event venue armed with the knowledge that the temporary structure was already nearing its end-of-life. Rather than putting the thing out of its misery, the mayor opted for repair at a cost that will run into “hundreds of thousands of dollars”. Short-termism has always been a quintessentially Auckland disease, resulting in the city frequently getting the awful architecture it deserves, particularly alongside the beautiful Waitematā. 

In preparation for 2021 – the America’s Cup and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum – it’s hard not to see a bit of déjà vu as a flurry of fast-tracking construction activity is underway along the city’s waterfront. You have to ask what public legacy the city will be left with and whether or not Queens Wharf will still have the Slug and remain a ‘Junkspace’ zone.

Council is gung-ho: “Once the America’s Cup events are over, Auckland will gain a sequence of new, publicly-accessible wharf areas, democratising the harbour and allowing people to experience the water space without a boat.” The promise is largely based on the teams’ base buildings being removed after the event, leaving new open spaces on Halsey and Hobson Wharves beside the harbour.

And, by retaining the Team New Zealand base on Hobson Wharf, there’s “the opportunity to deliver flexible, community-accessible spaces on the water, to complement the commercial focus of the Viaduct Events Centre.” That’s seen as compensation for the lack of availability of the people’s wharf when cruise ships are berthed and most of the wharf becomes a secure zone for servicing.

Back at Queens Wharf, work is under way on the $75.6-million redevelopment of Auckland’s Downtown Ferry Terminal, which involves the relocation of existing ferry services provided from Piers 3 and 4 to six new berths on the western side of Queens Wharf. The new berths employ reverse sawtooth-shaped pontoons, three enclosed gangways and three fixed shelter structures. 

Sounds great, but a closer look at the Isthmus-designed plan seems to show some commuters will get wet, twice, when it’s raining – once on their way to the new covered shelters and then again as they leave them to board their ferries. Surely a key design driver of a ferry terminal would be to keep passengers dry as they embark and disembark. More concerning is a report by Tonkin + Taylor, which indicates the planned relocation of berths, while improving access, doesn’t really address predicted growth in ferry services and patronage. Short-termism wins again.

There’s similar lack of vision in the recent approval of the controversial 90m extension of Queens Wharf to enable the mooring of cruise ships too large for the port. It’s currently subject to an Environment Court appeal by groups opposed to this kind of ongoing encroachment into our harbour. Meanwhile, there are signs of Mayor Goff looking for alternatives – he has raised a proposal to use barges to transport imported cars to South Auckland instead of storing them at both Captain Cook and Bledisloe Wharves for two or three days before trucks freight them off to car yards.

In theory, that might allow Bledisloe Wharf to be converted to allow mega cruise ships to moor there, meaning there’s no need for the unsightly Queens Wharf moorings. But, while Goff muses on barges, Ports of Auckland is already under way on a new five-level car-park building on Bledisloe Wharf.

This somewhat flies in the face of the government’s Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy, which is considering moving Ports of Auckland’s activities elsewhere. As far as Ports of Auckland is concerned, it’s staying put, building an unsightly car-park and a hotel. Business as usual, working to a 30-year strategic plan approved by the council in October 2018. It seems there can be no such thing as long-term planning in Auckland.

It’s not all dismal, however. The long-awaited upgrade of Quay Street – a transformation designed by LandLab that will see reduced traffic, dedicated bus lanes, wider footpaths and a separated cycleway, plus massive amounts of rain garden planting – is going to be a most-welcome enhancement to the waterfront. Disappointingly, some key joining aspects of this coastal path – the proposed new bridge crossing from the Viaduct Basin to North Wharf and the much-wanted SkyPath attached to the Harbour Bridge – seem to be delayed.

The time is long overdue for Auckland to address these short-termism failures of planning, to avoid, as one architect put it, another “cheapo, half-cocked Auckland affair” and to provide a truly public waterfront.

This article first appeared in Architecture New Zealand magazine.

Subscribe here