Tank Park transforms a former bulk liquid storage terminal on Auckland’s waterfront into an immersive public landscape that reveals rather than erases the site’s industrial past. For more than a century this land formed part of the city’s working harbour, housing storage tanks for tallow, cooking oils, petrochemicals and caustic soda.
The design adopts a strategy of selective retention and adaptation. Rather than preserving every tank or removing them entirely, the existing infrastructure was edited through a process of subtraction. Tanks were removed to create access, views and public space, while a representative collection of structures was retained to establish a new spatial framework.
The retained tanks become more than artefacts. They structure movement, frame views, create enclosure and establish a distinctive identity within the wider waterfront precinct. Their scale, materiality and patina provide an authentic connection to the site’s history while supporting entirely new forms of occupation and public life. Selected tanks operate as illuminated landmarks, while others become containers for temporary installations, art and interpretation.
The project extends this adaptive reuse approach beyond the tanks themselves. The former network of pipes is reimagined as a series of public landscape experiences. The Pipeline traces the northern edge of the site as an elevated framework recalling the movement of liquids through the terminal and establishing a flexible structure for events, lighting and occupation. The Playline transforms salvaged valves, pipes and industrial fittings into a suite of interactive play elements incorporating light, sound, mist and movement. Together, these interventions reinterpret former industrial systems as social infrastructure.
At the centre of the site, the original exchanger pit – the operational heart of the terminal- has been retained as a large-scale piece of public furniture and interpretation. Rather than concealing the complexity of the site’s former function, the project celebrates it, inviting visitors to engage with the hidden systems that once shaped this landscape.
A conceptual coastal ecology weaves through the industrial structures. Coastal trees, climbing vegetation and epiphytic planting colonise tanks and pipework, suggesting a gradual process of ecological succession and rewilding. The landscape represents a transition from industrial occupation to public realm while providing shade, shelter and habitat within the city centre. The juxtaposition of steel infrastructure and emerging vegetation establishes an evolving dialogue between industry and ecology, permanence and change.
Tank Park is neither a preservation project nor a conventional urban park. It is an exploration of how industrial heritage can be reimagined as landscape infrastructure. Through adaptation, reuse and occupation, the project transforms a redundant piece of working waterfront into a new civic landscape that retains the memory, materiality and character of its former life while supporting the evolving future of Wynyard Quarter.
Data
Landscape Architecture: LandLAB NZ
Photo credits: Samuel Hartnett
