Winning design depicts iconic harbour for the people

Caption:  (L) Jonathan Lever receives his dummy cheque from NRI Director Dr Charles Yala.

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, November 22, 2015 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

WITH entries sent from within the country and overseas- it came down to the shortlisted five to eventually see a local design make the cut to be announced winner of the first public design competition on Tuesday at the National Research Institute.

South African PNG resident Jonathan Lever’s ambitious design took out the major prize of K10,000, with a majority of voters in the public selection exercise conducted last month.

Mr Lever’s design incorporated plans for the building of a canal from Jackson airport linking out to the coast to the Fairfax harbour area for a real tourist feel to the iconic section of the city.

“Most of the emphasis of my design is that I wanted the design to have a world class impact that puts Port Moresby on the map on a global scale,” Lever said.

“Everybody know Darling Harbor in Sydney and the Harbor Bridge and Marina Bay Sands- and there is no reason why Papua New Guinea can’t have the same.”

“Papua New Guinea has got a far more beautiful coastline than Singapore. Port Moresby has got a beautiful coastline and if we can focus on a waterfront design that is in your face on an international marina it will become a tourist attraction.”

He said his design focussed on taking back the prime coastline from individual developers for a whole based approached that forces them into conforming into the community approach.

“The other thing that I feel in my design it that Port Moresby has been developed by a whole group of greedy developers that have turned their back on every other development.”

“Women and children can’t walk around the city at night as it is not safe. There is nowhere to stop as there are no benches, no parks- it is a completely user unfriendly city.”

“It is one greedy developer fencing up and Port Moresby is very unsafe. I thought this would be a golden opportunity to have a massive precinct which would operate in the same basis as a big shopping mall with key anchor aspects to it where women and children can run freely into it all the way around.”

“I am saying no and that the waterfront must be entirely public, in fact it is completely opposite to all the developments we have had so far.”

“The design offers public buildings including galleries. All the sort of things that public can go to- big aquariums history museums, coffee shops, restaurants, kids play areas.”

“In actual fact it is going to hurt the developers, but these are the actual buildings that will create development for the country.”

In making the announcement of the winner, NRI Director Dr Charles Yala, said that the concept was innovative and encouraging, and he called for more concepts to be implemented in the design of urban areas other than Port Moresby.

“I would to encourage such idea competitions with the view to inform, influence, and shape the development of other cities and towns across the country.”

“We received 2678 valid ballot papers in the 5 days with voting sites at the Port Moresby Royal Papua Yacht Club, Gordons RH, Vision City, City Hall, and finished at the Nature Park.”

“We actually give winning design to NCDC. Unfortunately, NRI just generates ideas, we are not directly involved in the actual implementation so NCDC as we speak is the authority to implement the development of Fairfax habour and they have a local development plan and NCDC is part of it.”

“The winning design will be displayed in the new city hall along with the other top two designs, and they can also be view on our NRI website.”