Disappointed! We carefully picked a selection of the most outrageous entries that we thought Auckland might go for: the official choice of 5 contestants is out, and whaddya know – they didn’t agree with any of our choice! No giant Kiwi eggs! No rugby balls! No tacky stuff at all! But at least they have made a decision…. almost. So, here are the final Auckland 5:Design number 024 – Andrius Gedgaudas, Architect, Shanghai China.
Design number 046 – Den Aitken, Pete Griffith and Hamish Foote, Field Landscape Architecture, Auckland.
Design number 170 – David Gibbs and Aaron Sills, Construkt / SVB, Auckland.
Design number 195 – John Coop, Tasman Studio, Auckland.
Design number 216 – Simon Williams, Williams Architects Ltd, Auckland.
There are some great images available on the official Auckland Queens Wharf website, which you should go to and click through the pictures on. Also goodt to see that there is a range of architects on the list: some well known, some lesser so.

Coincidentally, at long last the Wellington Waterfront Ltd have also posted the entries on line for the Outer Tee of our own Queens Wharf – thank you for taking our subtle hint – and may we say how pleased we are to see the full line-up presented, as Auckland have, on the web for all to see. Auckland also presented every single entry in a temporary exhibition in the Union Fish building – and let the public vote. Are the WWL going to take that risk here too? Why not? Maybe it would be too much to ask for a vote – but let’s have them all on display! Shed 11 or Shed 13 anyone?

Winners will be announced early in November 2009 – still a month away. But we’re looking forward to it. In the mean time, here is some entries from the Wellington Outer Tee competition that we think are absolutely fantastic.

What a fantastic idea – using the public space to provide room for public fun. Here’s another, which teases out ideas of public space, housed in an ephemeral flexible structure:

And then there is this one – bearing a resemblance to one of our existing city architectural landmarks: