Commercial Bay - Te Toki i te Rangi

Urban transformation

Auckland CBD has traditionally operated on north-south axis along Queen Street. The Commercial Bay development provides the opportunity to seamlessly link the length of Auckland’s waterfront into a continuous high-quality promenade extending from Wynyard Quarter in the west to Britomart in the east – a connected waterfront experience which will come to define the city for residents and visitors.

In addition, the design strategy sought to break down the scale of the city block, activating its four edges with individual but interrelated street-front buildings.

A new retail model 

The design team consciously banned the word ‘mall’ from the lexicon. There are no glass sliding doors or air conditioning. This is an urban outcome, where a network of open-air, public laneways create fluid transitions. The result is a highly successful retail environment. In the first four days of opening, many retailers had hit their first month's sales targets. Today, there is a waitlist of high-calibre brands wanting to open within Commercial Bay. 

Through close collaboration with mana whenua, the former intertidal location of the site led to the identification of the Pātikitiki as a motif which could bind together the project across a range of scales – from the skyline scale of the structural diagrid to the paving and natural stone inlays – the Pātikitiki is a unifying visual element which delivers a distinctive experiential outcome.