Hawke’s Bay Urban Futures – City 2.0

                Published in Bay Buzz Issue No 8 Sep/ Oct 2012

Build it and they'll come ?  

What does a billboard advertising the Bay look like to a passenger on the tube on a grey London morning in thirty years time? How does it stand against the competition as a beacon for capital and talent? Designer and urbanist Anthony Vile argues we need to filter all decisions around our built environment in Hawke’s Bay through that image.

“Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and for the city.”

Le Corbusier, 1931, one of the modern era’s greatest architects

Eighty years on, modern life is even more demanding, and the need for a ‘new kind of plan’ more urgent. By 2050, 70% of the world’s population, or over 6.4 billion people, will live in cities – the ‘urban revolution’.

Coincident with threats to energy supply and the environment, the urban revolution is a catalyst for a new way of thinking about cities and how we occupy and use them. We are living in a time of massive change, yet it is still possible to understand and derive a path based on knowledge, intuition, tools at hand and perhaps a little dreaming. That is what designers do every day.

What does this urban future mean for Hawkes Bay?

To some extent I am a refugee from the GFC and the Auckland housing crisis, in the Bay for the last two years, my connections here via genetic memory. With kids in tow, mum and dad seek refuge from the challenging elements of big city living, bursting with experience and enthusiasm for the promised-land and the opportunities it might afford – open space, big sky, no traffic, affordable housing, good schools, fresh produce, friendly people, less stress.

The new California, ripe for and welcoming of new talent and ideas to help deliver a better future to a culturally rich, diverse region growing to be confidant of its place in national and global affairs. Go the Bay!

For those not tied to the land through birth, the provincial experience is perceived as being a lifestyle choice. Especially so when viewed through the marketing material foisted by travel and real estate agents. The Bay is coincident with a ‘unique lifestyle’. The vineyard experience and the opportunity for healthy active living – think beautiful people, dude on a push bike, surf board under arm, a gentle roll down the hill to a right hand point break, back home to crayfish, chardonnay, children happily playing in the vines with a puppy. Fantastic.

Beyond the image

I feel I can now see beyond that marketing image, attractive as it is, to the reality of the Bay and what in essence are some trends troubling and antithetical to the promise. For now I may still have the luxury of fresh eyes capable of seeing the opportunities sitting at the doorstep, waiting only for the right catalyst.

Without a common vision it is unclear how the region can develop and compete for national and global capital and talent, while offering a sustainable lifestyle and pathway for our people now and in the future. Fragmentation and disconnection evident in the political ecology is glaringly obvious as manifested in the built environment. We have a very clear correlation of spatial location with income and social issues, better forgotten than confronted … out of sight, out of mind. Scattered around the Bay various settlements reach out to each other with sinuous asphalt arms, reliance on the automobile creating a ‘could be anywhere’ scenario.

Thankfully, the key attributes of sustainable city-making are coincident with the key elements of high-value urban environments. Compact, adaptable, walkable, connected, legible, diverse, easy to get around, conducive to the exchange of ideas, dollars and stories. Think Barcelona not Botanydowns. Cities around the world are rethinking the post-war auto-centric model and transforming, not necessarily because they want to, but because in order to remain competitive over the long term, they must.

Therein lies a great opportunity for the Bay. In reconsidering how and where we build, we also need to reassess the value architecture and urban design plays in creating value in our built environment and lifestyles. With better design, under-performance in all four bottom lines could simultaneously be addressed.

image courtesy MVRDV architects

Needed: design intelligence

CALL OUT:

“We have reached an interesting time when the drivers of sustainable cities are the same as the drivers of livable cities …When these characteristics come together as they do in Barcelona, they provide an alchemy of sustainability, social benefit and economic vitality. These cities reduce their need for car travel, reduce energy consumption and emissions, use local materials, support local businesses and create identifiable communities.”

– Rob Adams , Director of City Design, City of Melbourne, The Age, 2009

Design intelligence needs to be applied as a mechanism to create quality, innovation and value. This is especially true of those areas and communities most at social risk. Opportunities to future proof the housing stock based on best practice in communities such as Maraenui are being missed. Instead, planning processes enable the development of places with no clear identity … based on the preconceptions of politicians, bureaucrats and contracted drafts people with perhaps the best intentions, but without the right training and little or no connection to place.

The Napier Art Deco resource of architecture and design obviously creates value for the city as a clearly identifiable brand. That opportunity was created eighty years ago. Decisions made today have the potential to create value long into the future, and need to be taken against a vision of what that future could be. What is the billboard lifestyle we want to sell to our great grand children?

In order to leverage its unique potential, it is imperative that design is enabled at all levels of city-building and development in the Bay. Three councils in the region serving a population of 150,000 and not one architect or urban design specialist on Council staff to advise what spatial and design opportunities exist or to add value to property development initiatives, whether public or private. What opportunities are we missing by this void in knowledge? The old adage “we don’t know what we don’t know” springs to mind.

Design panels have been used with some success in Ahuriri; they are talked about in Hastings, but seldom actioned. They are standard fare in maturing cities where it has been realised that, without the input of design professionals, there is a risk that the built future of the region may in fact prove to be a tax rather than a value-adding proposition. Heritage is as much about what we create today as what we protect for tomorrow. Based on current trends, what would a “2012 Design Appreciation Weekend” inspire in eighty years?

What are the processes to enable a collective vision for the future Bay? The issues are understood to some degree. ‘Sustainability’ and ‘place-based planning’ are bandied about as notions of merit between the various councils and decision-makers. HDC with its catch phrase “great living for a sustainable future” ticks the box, but is actually unclear in meaning.

There is no regional clarity of vision other than perhaps agreement that economic growth is desirable, water is important, consultation is legally required, and China is where the money is. A vision and pathways to achieving it need to be extricated from a three-year political cycle masquerading as a long-term plan.

Globally there exists a vast amount of research and best practice examples of sustainable city-making, sustainable transportation models, sustainable housing, sustainable lifestyles. The speed of global communication enables research and ideas to grow.

The city is open source. Geographic isolation no longer equals cultural isolation. Geography is no longer an excuse for mediocrity. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel … just understand, based on local and global knowledge, what wheel works best here.

One of the great advantages of the regions, compared to a behemoth like Auckland, is a relative nimbleness and resilience based on scale. A nimbleness that could perhaps overcome inertia and prove adaptable, analogous to a coastal tender compared to a super-tanker. More of a ‘just do it’ approach rather than the convoluted processes and energy demands involved with changing the course of a super-tanker.

The opportunities visible through my specific design-world spectacles, and global point of reference, might seem pretty obvious and might sound like a one-liner lifted from a marketing pamphlet, but I think the Bay could create its point of difference through its attitude to architecture, urban design and place-making as a celebration of our unique climate, geography and culture. Our wine is famously a unique product of our climate and geography; why not our buildings, John Scott and a few other local luminaries aside?

Our urban design opportunities

Napier, with its deco cloak a symbol of rejuvenation and newness, is now in danger of becoming purely nostalgic, less willing to invoke the wand of newness. What if Napier continued to embrace ‘newness’ as it did post-earthquake? How much more of a tourist attraction could it become?

In a response to these times what if deco city was also eco city? There is an opportunity now, as the earthquake-prone building issues are addressed, to re-embrace the idea of new and rejuvenation. It is possible for historic ways of thinking to sit beside new ideas comfortably. Carbon fibre and brick.

Hastings, with its urban grid and railway marks time in denial, while its potential bubbles just below the surface. What if the artificial constraints placed on its natural ecology were lifted and water once again flowed … as did the crowds on Heretaunga Street? Hastings, once known as Christchurch of the North, appears destined by political process and nostalgia to be an under-performing retail main street and parking area?

What if it had a river again? It wouldn’t be the first city in the world to realize what once was considered a liability was perhaps actually the city’s greatest asset. What if its natural ecology over time was the basis for its renaissance as a leader in ecological urbanism?

What if the opportunity of connecting the two main urban centres via the key strategic asset known as the railway corridor was taken? What if freight traffic was pushed out of Hastings central and off the Napier Parade as was first mooted in 1965?

What if the advantageous exposure to solar energy was used to its maximum effect reducing the tax on households as well as the tenuous link to the national grid?

What if the burgeoning population of baby boomers embraced inner-city living, and valuable land taken up by rest-homes and suburban expansion was given back to food production or nature?

What if parking became simply park?

What if real constraints on suburban development enabled people to re-inhabit the city centres drained of retail space whose tenants require only a URL to trade these days?

In lieu of low natural population growth and a rapidly aging population, what if we more actively sought immigrants?

What if the dynamic nature of the seismic, alluvial and coastal landscape was celebrated, rather than feared? What if the biodiversity and ecological uniqueness of the region was regenerated in balance with the needs and growing demand of crop production?

What if Maori heritage was celebrated “as a living spirituality, a living mana moving through generations” manifested and “brought to life through relationships between people and place” (The Māori Heritage Council Statement on Māori Heritage).

There is no denying the challenges faced by the Bay in a changing world. Challenges with a regional focus, but also global. One hopes the measures put in place to mitigate future issues are well-considered, as previously acceptable lifestyle choices become no longer so.

As guardians of the future, present decision-makers should offer urban futures based on more than car park numbers. They need to enable sustainable lifestyles and resilience through clarity of vision, leadership and design. Giving value to design does not need to be limited to big cities and big budgets.

Design was clearly on the public radar in the Bay eighty years ago. Like then, we need again to start with a dream and let those with the passion and the knowledge negotiate that future, be it a house or a city.

Go the Bay … “ the beauty of which can only be seen through the eyes of a Hawk”. Here is hoping design and spatial intelligence just might again unlock some of that beauty and add value to our region. 

 http://www.baybuzz.co.nz/archives/6338/

Across the Ditch

Published in Architecture NZ Nov/Dec 2012

IMAGE  COURTESY ©TERROIR  

Coverage from the Across the Ditch annual conference of RAIA NSW country division.

I recently was lucky enough to be able to attend the annual conference of AIA NSW Country Division appropriately named “Across the Ditch.” The event proved to be an insightful and welcome few days highlighting some of the universal issues practices are facing both here and across the ditch.

The Conference was held in Napier partly because of its provincial setting partly in homage to the spirit of recovery embodied in the city’s architecture, partly as an excuse to jump on a plane.

The NSW country division was established as a separate operating unit of the NSW chapter of the AIA to represent the needs of architects who’s primary area of business was outside of the urban areas of Sydney or Newcastle. The perception that the needs of provincial architects could be catered to more effectively by a standalone chapter acting locally “to promote and provide better architecture services” was the premise for the formation of the NSW country division.

The conference themes addressed the concerns of the provincial architect and the idea that “Regional cities and towns need alternatives to universal anonymous development in order to retain their individual character and ensure their future viability. “

The sweeping azure horizon framed in the adroit aluminum of the War memorial conference centre windows formed the backdrop for invited speakers, various social functions, and the Country division’s annual awards ceremony. As all conferences in the art deco capital of the universe should, proceedings were kicked off with a walking tour.

What became plain over the course of the event was the similarities in issues architects both sides of the ditch are dealing with, both the scale of the city and individual building. No denying the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is very real and has had a profound effect on the business of architecture.

The conference raised some interesting questions regards practice in the “country” in our age of globalization and hyper communication where location is less important than data connection and runway length. The desire to park out front still exists in the larger metros so that hardly defines a provincial mindset. Perhaps it’s a relationship to landscape that defines the provincial and how we express that relationship, the connectedness of people to place expressed in our buildings and public spaces as the vine to the land.

Chris Kelly’s presentation “regional character and architectural opportunities “ talked the audience through some of the opportunities his workshop has found in the regional context to explore elements of “mastering architecture” specifically in relationship to “craft” and place making with reference to the award winning Waitomo visitors centre and the locally relevant proposed Te Mata Peak visitors centre. Both projects use the specificities of site including cultural connections and an overlay of Maori stories to uncover innovative responses to brief.

There was general applause by the visitors for the recent uplifting of standards in NZ architecture and specifically an appreciation of the craft demonstrated (leaky buildings aside). Both countries struggle with the standards inflicted in the mass housing markets and the inertia inherent in both the building industry and local government planning regimes.  In the context of the rise of the uber practice happening in the Australian market with an associated loss of craft, New Zealand’s pure point of difference could be craft based?

?

Geographic isolation no longer equals cultural isolation. Geography is no longer an excuse for mediocrity. As identified by the NSW country group it is the professional responsibility of its chapter members to actively promote educate and engage with the community regards local design issues and best practice. No more so than now the regional opportunity exists whether it be leveraging off geography, climate or attitude. Community education is vital.

Applause was also given by Australian colleagues to the collaboration and participation of indigenous culture in architectural projects in Aotearoa, highlighting a very unique NZ opportunity. This  was Communicated none more so than by Pip Cheshire’s presentation of the time laden process to develop a Samuel Marsden memorial in the Bay of Islands. A project of national significance, not a church nor a wharenui then what? A definition of national identity somewhere between God and Maui, somewhere between landscape and building, a new story or a new take on an old story? The opportunity again based on the specificity of site and culture for a unique NZ story to emerge from the landscape.  A question we can continue to ask ourselves where does architecture sit in the cultural and geographic landscape as a definition of a regional identity and by extension nationhood?

NZ recent success at the WAN awards solidifies our place in the global ecology of architecture innovation. The city is now becoming the focus of architectural research in NZ. Our Australian Colleagues have the head start in that respect with federal representation at the level of the city in order to deliver the quadruple bottom line. The need for similar representation at the government level in New Zealand is not going away. Architecture needs to assert itself as a relevant and vital process and outcome of city building. This is true of the main centers but lets not forget the provinces in perpetual danger of ruin by project managers and well intentioned but misguided politicians.

The questions asked by Gerard Reinmuth of Sydney Practice Terrior,whose practice name itself translates loosely as a sense of place,spehere of influence spans its conception in Tasmania, growth in Sydney to current work in Copenhagen. The practice has taken up the gauntlet of global and critical reflective practice perhaps more than any other speaker offering an insight into how relevance needs to be maintained through evolving practice models and focus on architects core skills and key point of difference, their   innate “spatial intelligence” which offers the potential to reconsider their abilities and role in city making and where in the value chain they might sit.  

Ian Athfield in his closing presentation touched on some important issues specifically related to his recent experience in Christchurch, the struggle between the heritage supporters, the engineers and the insurance industry. In a sense the struggle between nostalgia and authenticity. As Napier did eighty years ago Christchurch has been given the mandate to embrace the opportunities of our time.

Nationally our urban centers await the shockwaves from the earthquake quake commission findings, which may render some regional city’s heritage buildings at land value less cost of demolition. This is a real and present threat to National built heritage.

Mr. Athfield most importantly reminding us that dogged determination, passion and imagination can indeed move mountains and you needn’t wait for council consent to do so. The vitality of Ath and his work was greatly appreciated by the audience cementing him as the legend he is not just here but across the ditch also. A shame there was not a few more NZ architects in the audience to join the collegial discussion, hopefully an indictment on the cost of attendance and not the local culture. Cheers to the NSW country division, a good bunch and a great event.

Happy 50th Saint James Church Hastings

Published in Architecture NZ Sept/ Oct 2012

Photo Courtesy of Saint James Archives

Happy 50^th Saint James church Hastings

1024 Duke Street Hastings

Designed by: L.J.J. Hoogerbrug

Built 1963

NZIA Merit Award 1964

While waiting for my daughter’s dance class to finish one Saturday morning in the hall adjacent to St James church a leotard clad eight year old shoes in hand asks her harried father “ Dad what is that building? Is that a wall or roof? It’s a roof says the Dad “ What’s inside it?” asks the inquisitive young ballerina. “I don’t know what’s inside most roofs?” answers the dad obviously now thinking about the philosophical ramifications of his following answer “ Nothing. ”

It is only on entering this building from the bright afternoon light of an August afternoon in suburban Hastings one soon discovers there is far more than nothing inside this particular roof.

Having just celebrated its 50^th birthday, constructed at a time of optimism and progress buoyed by post war economic and cultural growth the Anglican Church was a patron to a young architect allowing him to explore elements of architecture that are rarely seen in a brief these days. Make a space for our community that allows wonder and reflects greatness.

Space and light tinted via the carefully placed colored lenses in the North East facing glazed façade wash the interior from above creating a place of richness, repose and reflection.

The Building is much loved by the community that has worshipped here for the last 50 years. They clearly believe their church is something special. That the special ness is imbued by the architecture, the clarity of a simple idea rendered in native timbers and light, that remains largely as it was conceived fifty years ago. A few pews rainwater stained from a particularly persistent easterly part of the memory now of place and secondary to the aesthetic experience and grander ideals personified and praised above other more earthly concerns like weather tightness.

Freshly cut flowers are being carefully arranged on the altar and memories shared as our conversation turns to the unconscious movement of eyes upwards. It can’t be helped. 50 years on the architects intention vilified by that unconscious reaction, the eyes move up towards the light just as they did 50 years ago. A very durable idea that we hope will be part of the community for another fifty at least.

Lets hope earthquake prone building hysteria and exorbitant insurance costs don’t put paid to this piece of Hawkes Bay heritage.

Further reference p 127 “Long Live the Modern” ed Julia Gatley

Black and white photo 1963 from St James archives.

Questions to the Parish Priest, Jan Tapper, on the event of the buildings 50th anniversary.

1.           How long have you been working from this building. 

I have worked in the building in the form of leadership since 1985, (27 years)

2. How does the building work from your point of view as the parish priest and conductor of ceremony and ritual ?

Pleasing acoustics, ease of movement, aesthetically lovely. Easier without the two steps at the altar ( Recently removed in a parish working bee )

3. What do you consider the most delightful aspect of the building?

The most beautiful aspect is when the sun reflects through the coloured window across the wooden wall by the cross.

4. How does the maintenance compare to other buildings of worship you have been or are involved with?

Maintenance can be a nightmare. Rough surfaces to paint, very high rafters gather dust, flaking paint off the high windows, cracking putty.

5. If you were to change anything about the building what would it be?

If I was to change anything I would possibly remove the attached toast rack seating to enable changing styles of worship – closer intimacy.

6. A somewhat oblique question......... how would you explain to a six year old why the church building is the shape it is ?

A man had a wonderful dream about how to please God by building a beautiful building reaching up into the sky.

7. How would you persuade or dissuade a group based on your experience with this building the value design might bring to the community ?

We all have dreams to enhance our lives. Many have special skills and talents and use them to realise their dreams

8. Do you think the building will continue to function as a place of worship over the next 50 years ?

The building should last the next 50 years subject to a huge earthquake.

9. What are the biggest challenges to preservation from your point of view ?

The biggest challenge is paying the insurance on the building and the ongoing problem of keeping it presentable and user friendly.