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After
a fair number of years in the doldrums, Auckland is humming again.
The cranes are back, excavating for the large new Britomart transport
hub. Down on the waterfront things are almost unrecognizable as
the America's Cup village eats into surrounding areas, creating
a new centre for drinking in a city that had lost many previous
venues to demolition, fire and Starbucks.
The new PricewaterhouseCoopers tower
is a big triangular 80s office building next to the waterfront district.
One local non-architect friend insisted that it had actually been
there for years and was being reclad. Is this a good or bad thing?
There isn't much to this Stephenson and Turner building - dark bands
of glass alternate with white spandrel panels down its faces. The
podium, not present on the artist's rendering, is a lucky afterthought.
It's a big Meier-ish frame that makes the tower less obvious from
the street. Hopefully it will work to lessen wind gusts off the
building, a problem encountered too often in this city.
What's most unfortunate about this tower is that it's so obvious
from the water. It is now a dominant part of the face of the waterfront,
a face that just got duller.
This tower shares its whiteness with the adjacent new Princes Wharf
development, which is quite a differrent animal. Leuschke Group
architects have built an apartment complex-come-carpark-come-hotel
on the elderly piles of the Princes Wharf overseas passenger terminal.
The new building is chilly neomodernism in the manner of Richard
Meier (again), and perhaps the Kelvinator refrigerator company.
There is the occasional flourish which breaks out of the framework,
suggesting the prow of an ocean liner. Princes Wharf is a carefully
composed grouping of finely detailed white blocks. It is quite a
beautiful building within this tradition.
Since a spurt in the early 80s it has been rare to see such
stark white buildings going up in Auckland. After the 80s boom and
crash, glossy white buildings gave way to something a little more
wholemeal. For a while there was a marked swing towards patterned,
curved and textured work that was saturated with colour. It often
nodded towards Polynesia. These new developments run the 90s out
of Downtown. A new gung-ho spirit has taken hold, propelled by America's
Cup successes. Pricey bars and restaurants now jam the waterfront
to cater to a new generation of sharply-dressed entrepreneurs. Gloss*
is back.
The light in this city is fresh and sea-washed, giving colours an
intensity they don't have in continental countries. White walls
can cause extra glare here, and they tend to age faster as soot,
salt and seepage leave their mark. Kelvinator architecture has usually
made it to these shores with a fair degree of filtering for local
conditions. These new buildings seem to have bypassed this process,
having docked at Auckland direct from some sparkling modern utopia.
Peter Johns
* Gloss.
A trashy TV drama of the mid to late eighties, focussing on the
flamboyant lifestyles of Auckland's entrepreneurial elite.
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a
whiter and glossier auckland
