Like everybody else in the country, we were stoked to see Team New Zealand win the 2017 America's Cup. 

Just as it did in the run up to the 2003 America's Cup, Auckland's hosting of the event in four years time will once again see a dramatic construction and development effort on the waterfront.

In 2015, a $1 billion effort to develop parts of the waterfront began. With a new Park Hyatt hotel costing $200 million, the ASB Waterfront Centre, and hundreds of luxury apartments already in the works, Auckland's Wynyard Quarter is set to grow even further. Not to mention the fact it's already home to Air New Zealand, Fonterra, Datacom and Vodafone headquarters.

Back in 2013 during the America's Cup in San Francisco, plans were being hatched to extend one of the Wynyard Quarter wharves – either Wynyard Wharf or Halsey Wharf – apparently by 60 to 80 metres.

Team New Zealand lost that challenge and extensions were abandoned, so we may see them revisited in the lead up to the 2021 America's Cup. Alternatively, some of the bright thinkers from the architecture and engineering world may surprise us with new options as budgets are set aside for development.

Despite Auckland's property issues, large parts of its waterfront still remained untransformed and essentially appear as vacant lots. It's high-value land that could be used for innovative architectural projects, both for commercial/hospitality and residential use.

Architectus has been one of the predominant firms working on Auckland's waterfront throughout the years, and we can expect the team there will be involved in the next four year's worth of exciting work too.

Marshall Suckling