Lane Change

Remembering a slice of Auckland's history, this building corner juts out of a wall of the Durham Street West underpass. The protruding facade is a replica of an 1880s building that was located in nearby Shortland Street and is there to remind us of the city's heritage that has been demolished to make way for steel and glass towers.

Lane Change was artist John Radford's first public sculpture commission. "It's sitting there in what I call an inhuman area of town. The underpass doesn't get any direct skylight; it is just surrounded by the stale smell of waste and jumbo bins full of food scraps… I want people to question why the work is there, and respond to it," the artist told the New Zealand Herald in 1996.

Across the lane is his mural …that was then, and that was then… that also explores themes of buildings past. Both artworks were funded by a donation by a property development company responsible for a large development in the area at the time, part of Auckland City Council's incentive scheme for the creation of public art and public spaces by private companies.