NZ Visual Diary - entry 141

Queen Street promenade

As work continues in the effort to re-conceptualise Queen Street as something other than a banal commercial thoroughfare, there are tangible signs of an emergent street aesthetic.

While not yet ready to re-imagine Queen Street as a non-automobile (perhaps bus excepted) corridor for pedestrians & micro-mobility users, the Auckland Council has widened sidewalks by reducing car traffic to one lane in either direction.

The vibe of the street has greatly improved.

Mature trees line the street and greater efforts are being made to render natural light on walk and wall by installing artistically patterned and transparent street awnings like the one depicted in today’s image. The awning’s grillwork - with its nod to the indigenous silver fern, the quintessential floral image of New Zealand - casts an expressive dappled dynamism on this walkway.

By compressing one’s visual horizon and gently forcing a forward- and not upward-looking perspective, canopies along Queen Street also lend to the street a human scale, one that invites the casual pedestrian to interact with the street and not feel dwarfed by the towering dimensions of its buildings.