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Times Interview Headlines
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Times Interview
The Times Interview - Alistair Richardson, Explain Yourself to PJ Taylor
Thursday, 07 December 2006
• Howick and Pakuranga Times
WITH much focus on who’ll pay $385 million for the nation’s principal 2011 Rugby World Cup venue, there’s hardly been any talk about what the next generation Eden Park will be like. As the detailed resource consent hearing continues at Auckland City Council, interested parties are wondering how a completely overhauled Eden Park will work for players, performers, administrators, fans, neighbours and the community at large. HOK Sport Architecture has led the way globally in new or rejuvenation stadia projects in recent times. They include London’s world famous Wembley and Arsenal Football Club’s new Emirates Stadium and Dublin’s Lansdowne Rd, home ground of Ireland’s rugby and soccer teams. Brisbane-based HOK Sport principal Alastair Richardson (pictured right) is in charge of the Eden Park project and his creations include Wellington’s WestpacTrust Stadium, Melbourne’s TelstraDome and the Lang Park rebuild of his adopted hometown park, Suncorp Stadium.
What do you know of Eden Park?
One of the issues historically is there’s a group of stands of varying ages. It has never really been a complete stadium. Developments occurred as and when funds became available, as and when events dictated. What we have is a fairly disjointed mix of stands, representing 30-plus years of development, with the most recent being the ASB Stand, which our Kansas City office did back in the 1990s. It has always been the desire of the Eden Park Trust Board to have a completed stadium, which we looked at in 1997 when we were commissioned. What the Rugby World Cup has brought us is the opportunity to investigate how that might be implemented to create a world-class stadium that fulfils what’s essentially the legend of Eden Park. In Europe, Eden Park is known as one of the great rugby and cricket stadiums of the world. The development will enhance that reputation, by providing now the stands and facilities that match the traditions and history of the actual piece of grass out in the middle.
What’s involved in the rejuvenation project?
What the design is offering in terms of the community is the mitigation of a lot of the effects of what you see from the stands. There are key components with any stadium - noise, light, visual amenity, crowd behaviour and traffic. We’ve addressed those in a comprehensive manner in the redevelopment and also picked up on issues of local context in defining what the new stadium might look like. We’re looking at the completed scheme, which is essentially three new stands coming up to the existing ASB Stand. Replacement of the terraces, the south and west stands, providing a stadium of 60,000 seats. The design ethos has been to create a building representing the surrounding area of Mt Eden and the volcanic cones. We actually started this job sketching what we believed were the key components. One of them is the influence and dominance of Mt Eden on the area. When you look at a volcano, the cone is similar to the seating bowl forming around the central area/lake. A stadium is essentially like a volcano. You have the activity in the middle – the explosive action of the sport – with the crowd overseeing the action on the edge, containing the noise and atmosphere inside.
Eden Park project co-designer, Auckland architect and director of Jasmax, Richard Harris (pictured left):
One of the big elements was we constructed a new ground plain - the concourse level - which is 7m above pitch level and that we’ve treated as lava flow away from the volcano to the four [exit/entry] corners.
AR:
Hovering over that is essentially the cloud, the cladding to the new stands, which forms a veil. It encloses the whole stadium and creates a very modern, contemporary stadium, which contrasts with the ASB Stand. This is light and transparent with creative active edges, compared to the heavy solid presence of the ASB Stand.
What about public access?
We now have four entrances, from the current 16, in the four corners of the ground. The predominant ones are to the west, which link into the [rail/bus] transport nodes.
Suncorp Stadium, which the Eden Park model is based on, has many user-friendly access routes from transport centres and streets (
Times
, November 20). How will punters get to the new stadium?
The bus station passes around a re-orientated, redefined No 2 field. There’s a loop back out on to Sandringham Rd. That’s designed to facilitate the real change that’ll benefit the local neighbourhoods - creating a proper integrated public transport system that services the stadium. It’s a three-quarters rugby field, sufficient for training. The other thing we’ve done in relation to the local community is providing more community open space in the area, because when that field is not being used for training it’ll be available to the community.
What’s the reasoning behind that?
When we started looking at this and Eden Park came and looked around Suncorp Stadium, we talked about the principles we took there - Lang Park - was taking the park back to Lang Park. It’s very much the same principle here. We’re very intent on bringing the park back to Eden Park. A park is about a community space, not just a stadium.
Is it right to say areas outside the stadium building, presently inside Eden Park’s boundary, will become open public space?
The perimeter line is being pulled right back to the stadium. It’s no longer to the perimeter of the site. At each of the entries, we’re envisaging that on non-event days being able to see through those entrances to the grass. So there’s a connection between inside and out.
In three years, Brisbane people have undergone a culture change. They leave the cars at home now and board bus and rail public transport to get to Suncorp Stadium – on average, 80 per cent of attendees. How will Kingsland Station work in conjunction with the new Eden Park?
RH:
There are a lot of stakeholders, the Auckland City Council and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. There’s a preferred option [for a Kingsland Station pedestrian link] on the planning books, to be confirmed after public consultation. It involves putting in some infrastructure, which sits above the track and loads the platforms from above. So you can load the trains quickly. People will come up ramps and queue for the platform. It’s also getting a duel use for the community. It’s not just about events.
What do you say to Eden Park neighbours and the wider Auckland community?
It’s a leap of faith to understand these things can work. You’ll get people now who’ll be reflecting their current experiences forward. That’s a natural response. When you say there’ll be more games, your immediate reaction is ‘oh my god, I can’t do that’. But what you have to go to is the proof of the pudding. Look at similar facilities in similar areas that have exactly this issue. Suncorp Stadium has been an enormous success, as has the new Emirates Stadium of Arsenal. Both have shown categorically that a redeveloped completed stadium that addresses the effects, provides better amenity for the crowds, better access to public transport, significantly changes the behaviour of the crowd. We understand it’s a leap of faith for the local community. But we can give a reassurance that every time we’ve had this issue, that when the stadium is redeveloped there has been a significant improvement on all those effects, leading to a significant improvement of the lives of local residents.
