New melds with old

featuring Firth

22 October 2020

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Dunedin is well known as a university town, with the antics of students often documented in the media. But Dunedinites will tell you there is a whole lot more to Dunedin than its transient student population with the Dunedin City Council (DCC) – via their Central City Plan (CCP) put into place over the last five years – working to make the city more prosperous, diverse, vibrant and exciting for all walks of life, while still remembering its links to its Scottish and Maori heritage.

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A key transformational project of the CCP has been to make Vogel Street and abutments to the old Cumberland Street bridge more accessible and attractive with Firth’s PaveWare® being used to meld old blue stone cobbles with new paving – tying in the past with the future.

The abutments on either side of Cumberland St were all that remained of an old vehicle bridge that once spanned the gap from the warehouse on Vogel Street to the harbour side. The structure, made of Port Chalmers bluestone, was built between 1883 and 1886 and was demolished in 1977.

The new design for this area, developed by DCC’s own Urban Design team, aimed to make the area around this heritage structure more pedestrian-friendly and increase awareness of the site’s history. The upgrade included new lighting for the historic stairwell from the abutment to Cumberland Street and kerb buildouts with fencing that references the abutment’s history. The work also included new paving (from Firth), kerb and channel improvements and road resurfacing.

“We chose this paving because it went well with the natural stone and heritage environment in this area,” says Kathryn Ward, Principal Urban Designer, City Development. “We wanted something that would integrate well with the landscape and that supported the buildings.”

“The design from DCC was to use mostly Honed Piazza® from the Firth PaveWare® range, which has also been specified and used in other parts of the city, but to also incorporate old blue stone cobblestones that came out of the old Burnside Freezing Works that was built in 1883 and closed in 2008,” says Mark Lamb, Director of Q.C Contracting the sub-contractor responsible for laying the paving as part of the larger project.

“It’s not easy getting the old to work with the new but I am pretty happy with the way it has turned out. It certainly does tie in well together and is a vast improvement on what was there before.”