Auckland's CBD Into the future
Auckland's CBD Into the future
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St Patrick's Square upgrade
Project snapshot |
Design features
Design features
The design of St Patrick's Square was developed with input from nearby residents, businesses, square users, St Patrick’s Cathedral and the public. It reflects how people wanted to use the space and establishes a visual connection with St Patrick’s Cathedral. Auckland City Council engaged landscape architects Boffa Miskell as their designers, who have developed designs across a number of streetscapes within Auckland’s CBD.
Key design features include new paving, street
furniture, water features, planting and artworks.
Water feature
The upper part of the water feature is a figurative link to the Cathedral's baptismal font. The textured paved surface covered in a shallow layer of moving water creates a rippling effect. Water flows from a crack in the paving, disappearing and then gathering momentum to cascade through the central terraces.
The force of the water leads to a dispersal at the edges and the creation of stepping-stones. The water drops and disappears into a deep cavity that creates a hollow sound. Water reappears under a cut away stone slab. In the lower terraces the water is slow moving and deeper, distributing evenly across the pool before disappearing for a final time beneath the slab.
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| The water feature. |
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Art works
The square's history and cultural significance are reflected by artworks and
elements within the landscaping.
step
touch stone
A black granite sculpture by Auckland artist Steve Woodward will anchor the lower square and link it with St Patrick's Cathedral. Its twin inverted staircase elements allude to a travelling upwards and downwards, suggesting (among other things) light and dark, hope and despair, yin and yang. While the sculpture embraces the cathedral’s spirituality, it is open for interpretation by all cultures and beliefs and offers a focal point and place where people can reflect, remember and celebrate.
Font
Renowned Auckland artist Mary-Louise Browne’s stone text based art work surrounds the upper granite pool. The work is a meditation on time and eternity. The text is designed to be read in a circular manner as people physically move around the space. The pool aligns with the baptismal font inside St Patrick's cathedral. The work provides a connection between contemporary secular use of the square and its historical religious use. It provides a place for people to make their own connections and comparisons and to see the interaction through changes in spiritual sensibilities and poetic ideals.
Heritage mats
Engraving in the paving tells the history of St Patrick's Cathedral and the
Presbytery.
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| step
touch stone by Steve Woodward |
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| Font by Mary-Louise Browne |
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Lighting
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| The square at night. Simon Devitt, photographer |
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Lighting improvements have created a safer and more attractive nigh time environment and includes feature lighting of trees, artwork and the water feature.
Special feature lighting for St Patrick’s Cathedral lighting, part of the original concept design for the Square, is expected to be completed in 2010.
Paving
A hexagonal motif around the cathedral reflects patterns found in nature, St
Patrick's Cathedral roof and nave tiling.
Other features including new seating and street furniture, improved
pedestrian access, vegetation, grass, safety improvements.
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| Paving outside the square |
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Vegetation
In the upper square, deciduous exotic trees frame and give prominence to St Patrick's Cathedral, while in the lower square, native species create a distinctly Auckland feel.
Grassed areas provide more space for people to relax while flowering plants, including spring bulbs, add to the sense of an urban oasis.
Future developments
Future developments around the
square include the likely extension to Liston House and the conservation and the
renovation of the Presbytery. The council has an agreement with the Roman
Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Auckland to swap the public land required for
these developments with other land (the current Catholic shop) which is to be
used for public open space. We will continue to work with the Diocese on this
project.
The upgrade design also
considered other likely building developments adjacent to the square.
Updated January 2010
