Boffa Miskell Supports The Urban Room

With the UrbanismNZ Conference underway in Tāmaki Makaurau, we catch up with Boffa Miskell designers Rachel de Lambert and Stuart Houghton, and urbanist Ben van Bruggen to talk about the Urban Room.

Based on New London Architecture – a public gallery in Central London featuring large-scale interactive models of the capital – The Urban Room is currently in a leased space on Quay Street in Auckland. Mirroring its London Counterpart, the space is filled with two large-scale models of Auckland’s City Centre.

The 1939 City of Auckland model is handmade and covers a portion of central Auckland, from Albert Park to Hobson Street. The 1.8m wide and 3.2m long segment is all that survives from a much larger model that was made for the 1940 New Zealand Centennial Exhibition.

The 1968 Central Area Model is at 1:480 scale, and recreates the areas of central Auckland bordered by the motorways. For more than two decades Council planners used the 1968 model to visualise the way proposed construction would alter the character and physical spaces of the city.

“In The Urban Room, we’ve printed out a three-metre square aerial photograph of what the wider Tāmaki Makaurau area looks like today,” says Ben van Bruggen. “It’s essentially 110-kilometres corner-to-corner, top-to-bottom; and it connects the two physical models to the present-day city.”

“The models are a very tactile way of communicating what the city centre looks like,” says Ben. “But when you look at the photo, which takes in a much wider area, you realise that most of it is blue, a lot of it’s green; and really not that much of it is grey, but what’s grey is spread out along corridors.”

The models and photo offer a connected, bird’s-eye view of the city; and because everyone’s looking at the same thing, they’re conversation-starters and idea-generators — that’s what Auckland needs, says Rachel de Lambert.

“Having a forum for urban issues in the city is important, particularly one that can draw in a wide cross-section of the community to debate and advocate for urban issues,” she says. “A tangible space that brings in people is a format that has worked elsewhere, and it’s great to be testing out what it can contribute to the discussion in Tāmaki Makaurau.”

“The conversations have been fantastic,” says Ben. “We’ve hosted events and industry discussions; but even more exciting is that people come in off the street to look at the models and then they interact with our ‘Big Ideas’ board.”

Keeping it simple and accessible is the key: Big Ideas are written on sticky notes and left for others to see and respond to.

“At this point, it’s best to get people aware of The Urban Room’s presence and initiate a diversity of conversations,” says Rachel. “These things aren’t linear, but enabling the building of awareness, opportunities and conundrums is good for the wider understanding of the potential of the city and how we can all contribute to it.”

“The Urban Room promises something we have been lacking and is much-needed for our city – an ongoing, independent forum – both physical and in terms of a shared dialogue about the current challenges and future aspirations for our city,” says urban designer Stuart Houghton.

“Many of us have talked about the value of such an initiative for quite awhile. Ben has decided to tackle it head-on.”

Boffa Miskell joined the The Urban Room initiative early, coming on as a Principal Partner.

“We were very enthusiastic from the outset and only too happy to lend our support behind getting The Urban Room up and running,” says Stuart.

“For us, the greatest opportunity is to be part of helping shape the agenda for The Urban Room: What are the issues? How should we frame them to enable better, more diverse and well-considered dialogue to emerge and evolve?”

“Judging by what I thought at this time last year, in terms of where we’d be, I think it’s quite amazing how far we’ve come and what we’ve been able to do,” says Ben.

“We’re beginning to explore ideas and questions like: what it means to be the largest Māori city in the world; what it means to be a city committed to keeping temperature rise below 1.5 degrees; what it means to have a city centre that is vibrant and inclusive and alive; and finding out what younger generations want as their experience growing up in Tāmaki Makaurau.”

“These issues are at the heart of a lot of what we do as urban designers and landscape architects in the city,” says Rachel. “It’s good to be able to listen to diverse voices and conversations generated through the forum of The Urban Room, and to be one of those voices.

“I’m interested to see how it evolves and what forums we can be part of. What we don’t want or need is to just be talking to ourselves — we need to broaden the discussion and be relevant to a wide audience,” she continues.

“By participating in a new shared dialogue, ideas and perspectives with a genesis in The Urban Room can permeate through many people and organisations to help shape future decision-making,” says Stuart.

“We want this to be organic and to grow naturally. To my mind, for success over the longer-term, we would want key decision-makers and those with organisational authority to seek out The Urban Room as a genuinely independent and intelligent forum that they consider a go-to and a must-do in terms of canvasing the complex and challenging issues facing our city.”

Find out more about The Urban Room here