[By Murray Dewhurst in Auckland]
Not much has changed in central Auckland lately, with parts of it looking like a war zone. Some buildings have been coming down, some others are going up and some of them appear to be going up, and up, and up!
I’ve been working just over the road from the Sky City Convention Centre since it started just over a year ago and it’s direction has been all down. Almost the whole block was demolished and thousands of trucks have traveled past our office windows since, at first trucking out the 180,000 cubic metres of demolished buildings, soil and clay. Now the trucks are bringing in the pre-cast concrete slabs and steel. From what I can tell there is still a long way to go before the site returns to ground level.
In that time noise levels in the office have gone through the roof! Along with the trucks there are four cranes working flat-out, and they constantly beep, with another horn blasting at random intervals throughout the day. Add to that the another neighbouring building is set to be demolished, so I think it’s time to find a quieter place to work!
I chose a quiet Sunday morning to try to sketch the great hole in the ground from a closer view point. I didn’t last long — even though I was standing outside the site gates and with absolutely no construction work happening that day I expected to have a clean run. I’d just got the basics of the sketch below down when this very polite, but firm, security guard appeared from nowhere and moved me on (above). I got a few moments to sketch him on the spot then coloured him from a safe distance.
Visit Emerging Auckland for more details on Auckland’s building boom.
Here are a few other construction and deconstruction sketches from around the central city…
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| Demolition of the old Sumunovich Fisheries building on Viaduct Quay, making way for a new hotel |
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| Progress on Auckland’s new underground rail in front of the old Shakespeare Hotel |
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| One of the four cranes at the Auckland Convention Centre |
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| Crane between new buildings, Wynyard Quarter |
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| This tower over the road from the Sky Tower has a number of new levels since I sketched it last! |