Excerpts of poetry and prose celebrating New Zealand writers are wrapped around eight of the eastern trestle legs of the western box girder beneath the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

These poetry-adorned trestle legs can be spotted adjacent to Te Onewa Pa / Stokes Point, beneath the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Lifted from the printed page, they no longer work for intimate reading. Their re-presentation in the context of a spatial and built environment demands that they are engaged physically, on a much-enlarged scale. The arrangement requires the reader to move with the work and spend time with the words, the sounds they make, and the meanings that are formed.

Location

Auckland

Project team

Alex Smith
Kieran Dove

Worked with

Auckland Harbour Bridge Alliance
Cathy Challinor
DesignCraft with SignRight
Jawa Structures
Resin Surfaces
Studio Catherine Griffiths

Project date

2012

Awards

Category Finalist | Cost to build $200,000 – $500,000 | NZILA Resene Pride of Place Landscape Architecture Awards
Colour Maestro Award | Display + Product | Resene Colour Awards

New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) was upgrading the area within their designation around the southern end of Princes Street under the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Princes Street provides vehicle, cycle and pedestrian access to local residential dwellings, Stokes Point Reserve / Te Onewa and a connection to Queens Street and the wharf. Princes Street also provides access to the underside of the bridge for essential maintenance works to the bridge.

The design intent is to create a strong visual and physical connection to the reserve, harbour and coastal edge, as well as a celebration of the important local history and culture. The project team identified the opportunity to celebrate several writers of national significance who have local connections to Auckland/Tamaki Makaurau and the North Shore.

Boffa Miskell developed a process to work with local iwi representatives and local literary experts, to select the writers and literary excerpts. Permissions were obtained from the estates of the writers, and artist Catherine Griffiths was commissioned to design the layout of the poetry text.

Specialist signage companies Signright and Designcraft were commissioned to install the work. This included creating templates based on the design used for masking the bridge columns and the application of the painted lettering.