Stadium New Zealand poses a symbol of national achievement and identity, placing New Zealand’s national sport at the heart of the country’s largest city.
Designed to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup final, the building anticipates visibility on the world stage as a uniquely New Zealand venue – the home of world rugby.
Stadium New Zealand will represent not only Auckland but also the country as a whole. The stadium is conceived as a translucent, white cloud floating over the waters of the Waitemata – literally a long white cloud at the junction of land and sea - Aotearoa. The venue is fully glazed, allowing continuous visual connection between city and building, producing a light, accessible and active public building in the city’s heart. The openness of the stadium enables the activities within to be seen by both day and night, thereby connecting the stadium to the CBD of Auckland.
If Stadium New Zealand is to reflect the New Zealand character, several key values need to be translated from national identity into built reality:
A stadium placed at the junction of land and sea offers an opportunity to capture New Zealand’s essential relationship with its Pacific Ocean environment. All New Zealanders understand the importance of the ocean, both as a medium both for connectedness and separation from the rest of the world. The Sydney Opera House has captured the Australian identity at this critical land/sea junction – Stadium New Zealand offers New Zealand a unique opportunity to achieve a similarly powerful symbol.
The concept of the ‘floating white cloud’, placed lightly above the waters of Auckland’s harbour is highly symbolic. Not only does it refer directly to Aotearoa, but the transparent white fritted glass ‘skin’ of the stadium also refers to New Zealand’s self image as an open, agile, confident and welcoming nation.
The glazed cladding of the building allows the character of the building to change in response to daily conditions and allows the venue to become transparent at night. This transformation ensures that the venue is never perceived as an internalised, exclusive building but rather as an integrated part of a vibrant city and foreshore.
Stadium New Zealand is one object representing one people. Its single-minded, memorable form will be a symbol of confidence and unity. This is only possible if the stadium is designed as a complete, new venue without the need to accommodate existing structures.
The accessibility and visibility of the stadium is also critical to its success as a national icon – its wholeness must be able to be seen and recognised by people on a daily basis and as a part of daily life, an Auckland city waterfront location offers this possibility.
Stadium New Zealand will echo New Zealand’s identity as an environmentally aware nation. The building itself will reduce energy loads through effective sun-shading, water recycling and natural ventilation to all public concourse areas. The design will be ‘energy modelled’ to test various glazing, ventilation and shading strategies to ensure the building’s ecological ‘footprint’ is as efficient as possible. Sustainable strategies will reduce the ongoing operational costs of the facility and assist in ensuring a viable and operational model is maintained. The stadium’s location will reduce reliance on inefficient car-based transport by directly associating with Britomart as the emerging transport core of the city.
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