Ah, Picton. Sitting there, prettily at the head of Queen Charlotte Sound. You’ve got a lot going for you. A captive audience in the vast hordes of ferry-bound tourists venturing from north to south, or vice versa, ready to experience Marlborough’s ready delights: yachts, fish, aquaculture or results thereof.
It’s a small town, Picton. According to the 2006 census, there are just 2,928 residents (1,464 males, 1,461 females; just in case you were contemplating a move there for romantic reasons). It’s a town that is a significant transport node in this country’s grand scheme. As such, says urban designer Michael Hawes, it’s not immune “from city pressures”.
Yes, Picton has many great diversions, but it’s fair to say that you wouldn’t go to that small town for an architectural tour, and the best landscape architecture to be found there was created millions of years ago by rogue glaciers, not built. But things change. The town’s real asset is its waterfront. A fact not lost on the locals (see accompanying piece by local Nigel Hutchinson on p. 30).
Until fairly recently, to paraphrase Hawes, what Picton was lacking was a place, by the water, for people to gather.
“Across the history of the Sounds, Picton has served visitors and inhabitants as a meeting place,” says Hawes. “In recent times, it has served a car park.”
Remedying this involved years of consultation and design iterations, competitions, workshops, public meetings, “talking walls” and interviews. The outcome of that sometimes fraught process was a master plan that widened in scope from initial development opportunities into a concept for a mixed use, “people-focused series of public spaces and buildings that could tell a story about Picton”.
Picton’s story contains traces of a more sociable past, says Hawes, and that is common in many New Zealand towns. Those social patterns informed the reprogramming of the historically significant waterfront.
“In Picton, changing uses of waterfront land presented the opportunity to look to the town’s historic and current social patterns – exploring by means of written, mapped and verbal accounts, how the community has adapted, changed and used its public space over time.”
With construction now finished, the designers are confident that they have reclaimed a town square. There’s a waterfront promenade connecting the town with its wider waterfront – and it’s well regarded as a focus for civic activity, as the few thousand people who attended the New Year celebrations on the waterfront will attest.
In more expressive design language, descriptions of the reworked waterfront include the creation and framing of views with buildings and landscape elements, the orientation of spaces and objects, and the details – textures, materials, colours from the contextual landscape as well as historical and social narratives inscribed physically and through lighting – reflections of past and present activities, stories that will link the rich history of the site to present and future communities and visitors.
More commonly, it’s easy to see that there has been some quite clear delineation in some areas, subtle curves in others. There are elements of monumental yet functional forms; some blocky concrete forms that are finessed with battened timber seating or accentuated with heavy recycled beams from a West Coast bridge. In the main plaza, the orientation is appropriately seaward, and boardwalk insertions direct the views in that direction. The works also have a practical function, designed to balance former uses with something more forward-looking. Surfaces were designed to withstand the weight of coaches and forklifts, and the paved surfaces offer a visual connection to the escarpments of the hills surrounding the town.
The designers say that the Council wanted something quite different to other towns and cites in New Zealand. Cold tones weren’t an option, rather warmth and texture was prescribed. It’s found in the red and yellow brick and recycled timber. These materials, simply, extend a friendliness that, hopefully, will encourage visitors to linger, longer.