My Account
What would Porirua City look like today if Maori had designed it without the influence of colonial New Zealand? That was the hypothetical question asked in a national competition won last month by a young urban design team from Warkworth, led by Clynt White. While urban design is Clynt’s passion today, he says it took the farm boy from Tokatoka, near Dargaville, a few false starts before he realised what he really wanted to do with his life, as he explained to Jannette Thompson …
My family have been in the Dargaville area since the first ships arrived in New Zealand. My brother and I basically grew up on the family farm at Tokatoka, where Mum and Dad built a house. Mum was a really creative person and Dad, practical and hardworking. I inherited a combination of these qualities that would eventually lead me into the design industry. When I finished high school, I followed a girl to Hamilton and enrolled in a mechanical engineering course. I quickly discovered that this wasn’t for me.
Actually I’m not sure what I was thinking! Anyway, I lasted two days. I did some short courses after that including a bar and barista certificate, and a certificate in stainless steel welding. I then spent about a year working in forestry. I enjoyed the physical side of this work and at this point in my life it also gave me plenty of space to consider my future. I remembered during my brief stint at uni seeing design students sketching bridges. This interested me and I decided to look at architecture. I think it was the scope that landscape architecture offered that appealed to me – it wasn’t just about buildings, it was more about re-imagining and designing the environments we live in. After finishing my degree at Unitec, I did a Masters in urban design at the University of Auckland.
Landscape architecture is generally larger scale work and there are a lot of components to it. The work I do is mainly from a design and strategy perspective across a range of scales, from regional projects like motorway and infrastructure corridors, through to the design of parks and streetscapes. I have worked on projects in the education, health, commercial, residential, cultural and civic sectors, and have a particular interest in sustainability, resilience and regenerative design. I’ve recently been doing a lot of work in the transport sector, particularly cycleway projects. I was involved in the Te Ara I Whiti lightpath in central Auckland. I’ve also been involved in some major structure planning exercises, including a recent scheme to integrate a 1000-lot residential development into a golf course in east Auckland. We’re currently working closely with a Maori artist on a series of noise walls in Auckland, around Ellerslie, that hopefully will lift the bar in terms of noise wall treatments in NZ. In a previous role and while living in Perth I worked on a number of large, iconic roading upgrade projects.
While I was at university I was exposed to a lot of ideas around urban space and urban ecology, how people interact with space, the arrangement of city blocks and building typologies in cities. It’s the sort of stuff that really interests me. Initially, I found it difficult living in the city with the noise and traffic, but over time gained an appreciation of the positive aspects of city living. I experimented with living in increasingly smaller living spaces and went from a typical house and section in Ponsonby to eventually living in a 13sqm studio apartment. I can only describe the smallest space as “liberating”. I didn’t need a car because everything I needed was within walking distance – work, groceries, entertainment and parks. If I wanted to visit family up north, I’d just hire a car. There was a sense of community with the other tenants and absolute security. It made me realise that I’d had a fairly isolated childhood and I’d struggle to go back to anything like that.
My wife Geraldine and I moved to Warkworth three years ago and started a family. We chose Warkworth because it is located between our extended families, as well as for the rich natural environment in the region. I used to surf at Tawharanui; it is an amazing place. Warkworth is also a river town, a bit like Dargaville, which really appealed. We bought close to the town so we can walk to most things we need – in Warkworth you are pretty spoilt in terms of walkability. Granted that footpaths, road corridors and public spaces aren’t fantastic, but in terms of proximity, it’s really well scaled. The level of growth that is on the horizon for Warkworth is going to be a real challenge to manage. The pressure is so great and development is happening so quickly, that there is a need to act urgently if we don’t want to miss the boat. Certainly there is a critical need for both a town centre plan and a structure plan as mechanisms to guide the development of our existing and new urban areas into the future.
There are a lot of people talking in a lot of different forums about the future of Warkworth, but somehow we need to come together as a community to agree on a vision for the town. If we can identify some high level values, we can work on strategies to meet that vision. It is coordination that is missing at the moment. The discussion needs to be around issues like walkability, public transport, the residential housing mix, parking, public spaces and pathways/cycleways. If we don’t take the initiative, we risk losing the things we love about Warkworth. I believe the river is critical to any vision for the town – it offers so much potential if it is treated as the ‘jewel’ that it is. And when I talk about the river, I mean both upstream and downstream of the town centre – the complete catchment. If we start looking at water quality, that means protecting the riverbanks and catchment. At the same time this offers the opportunity to create a generous wildlife, recreation and transport corridor following the riparian margins. There is an opportunity to channel future investment into the creation of more people-focused spaces. The way we engage with our urban environments is changing. For example, we’re seeing electric bikes starting to revolutionise personal transport overseas and really challenging the dominance of vehicles in our urban landscapes. Wouldn’t it be great if Warkworth became a hub for sustainable thinking … we could become the first carbon-neutral town in NZ! I’d love to see Warkworth as a modern eco town. There is so much potential in our town and as it grows there is great opportunity to enhance its unique qualities while embracing positive change.
