Urban Renewal

With three singular designs at Wynyard Quarter, Patrick Clifford’s team at Architectus shows how good apartment living in Auckland can be.

- Jo Bates

It wasn’t so long ago that Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter was a nature-stripped industrial area that had done its days in the timber trade before turning to storing petrochemicals as the ‘Tank Farm’. The flat patch of reclaimed peninsula with boats berthed at its fringes was gritty and uninviting. When the sea breeze dropped, dank aromas from the few greasy spoons that fed local workers hung in the air.

That was until 2011, when $120 million was poured into developing new public parks and events spaces – it was stage one of a revitalisation and regeneration programme that will continue for about 20 years. With a change of direction, the public started to utilise this prime piece of Auckland and its three kilometres of coast. Interesting things started to happen for people who might consider living there.

Architectus has a long history at Wynyard Quarter, having been appointed by Ports of Auckland to develop the urban design framework for the area back in the early 2000s. The practice was one of three appointed by property developers Willis Bond to submit designs for Wynyard Central, the area’s first residential development, which stands on land tenured for more than 100 years.

“You lead this kind of project with the public domain, not the other way around,” says Patrick Clifford, a founding principal of Architectus. “Don’t think that the market will determine; think that we should provide a built-form framework for the market to participate in.” The approach was to establish broad communities at Wynyard Quarter, he says. “How do you create urban living in an environment that has significant public interest? It also tries to address the interests of the public versus the interests of the private.”