NZ Visual Diary - entry 327

Silo Park anteroom

For the first four years of our time as residents of our adopted home in New Zealand, my wife and I lived, along with our older daughter and her son, in the Auckland suburb of One Tree Hill. We had the remarkable good fortune to have found a rental home at the edge of Cornwall Park. Our backyard spilled into the 400 acre footprint of this beloved park.

Cornwall Park is endowed with palpable beauty. It’s sylvan splendour is self-evident and unmistakeable, although for the studious observer there are inexhaustible surprises to be found in minute detail.

Our four-year sojourn at the park’s edge was glorious.

Living as my wife and I do now in Auckland’s waterfront district of Wynyard Quarter presents the challenge of finding beauty in the built form of an urban centre. And so I did one evening as I strolled across Silo Park, a remnant of the quarter’s past life as an industrial area, marine and petrochemical.

In a previous century, the silos were erected to store cement as a land reclamation project spawned Wynyard Quarter from the sea and with it the possibility of building the city centre’s western-most waterfront precinct.

As today’s photograph demonstrates, the quest of finding beauty in the urban form of built environment can be rewarding.