Urban Design: Otara Lake & Waterways

Urban Design: Otara Lake and Waterways

• Urban Landscape Design
• Editorial Design

Challenge

Home to a community of over 75,000 people, the heart of Otara lays a long-neglected lake and one of the country’s most polluted waterways. In collaboration with the Local board, Auckland Council and MIT School of Visual arts, we set out to create a vision document that takes a fresh look at the possibilities for Otara Lake and give the project to clean it up a renew push.

Approach

Through a series of conversations with the locals and hearing personal stories of the good old days of fishing and swimming in the lake, the blend of different viewpoints on the possibilities and challenges gave us great insights into how restoring the lake & waterway could impact the community.

Focal point for the community

Having the creative freedom to imagine ways to revive a waterway that the community could be proud of, we designed a collection of conceptual plans and drawings illustrating our aspiration of an urban waterway that is the focal point for the Otara community. Where everyone can gather for festivals, sporting events or simply to relax and exercise.

Sustainable and Safe

One of the focuses was also on creating a sustainable and safe place where everyone can freely access the waters, and have it watched over by the local people instead of hidden or fenced off from the community.

Our hope is for these visions and ideas to stimulate the community and decision makers to look at the potentials of this forgotten treasure in our neighbourhood
and bring our local waterways back to life.

Additional sketches and concepts
can be viewed here