When the sun is out, the new park gets quite popular, especially on a sunny lunchtime. 

If you were elected tomorrow, what would you change in the RMA in your first 100 days in office?  

Is this really what we want to be seen from the main road? Is a blank wall the best we can do for a frontage onto the beautiful waters of Evans Bay? Or should we be striving for better for our city? Is there going to be some great and beautiful structure on top, or have we already had the masterstroke on this work of architecture already?  

Maybe we just leave you to make your own mind up. Terry Pinfold, the head of WCL, was an experienced contractor: 

“Pinfold made his name as commercial manager for Mainzeal in the 1990s when he was associated with projects such as moving the Museum Hotel, refurbishing the St James Theatre and building the Moa Point sewage treatment plant. In 1998 he set up the Wellington office of Auckland-based Hartner Construction. When Hartner went into liquidation in 2001, Mr Pinfold bought its Wellington operation and renamed it Wellington Construction. But three of his other companies - Kate Sheppard Developments, Holland Street Developments and Aitken Street Developments - are also in liquidation.”

Its not unusual for developers and builders to burn to the ashes and rise Phoenix-like in another form. Is this latest collapse just another phase in construction recycling?

WCL may have been caught in a pincer movement between rising material costs, complex designs, and probably the odd guaranteed maximum price. However, WCL viewed themselves as specialists in Design and Build, and therein perhaps lies their downfall: they don’t exactly have a brilliant track record regarding the quality of the developments they worked on. If there is one thing to almost guarantee a low quality of finish, an under-priced D&B is it: witness the architecturally stunted development of the Mulgrave St apartments. From an architectural viewpoint, D&B seldom delivers on what we may call Design Quality, and the majority of their projects bear this out: apartments in Mulgrave St, Bellagio apartments, the tall ugly skinny thing at 156 Willis Street, another tall pinkish apartment building in Johnston St, the Wellington YHA (later rebuilt to much higher quality standard by another company), the Hotel Raffael conversion, and some better quality projects such as projects in Oriental Bay, and of course their flagship piece in Century City.   Most of the other construction contractors seem to have pretty full workloads at present, although we’re obviously not privy to what their workload is like in the future. Certainly there are still a number of large projects on the cards, although some, like the government mega-project behind the Beehive, currently wrangled in Environment Court hell (and many would argue: rightly so too).

Still, at least earthquake repairs will be continuing, albiet at a slower pace according to this story in the DomPost. 

“Building owners in Wellington have been given another five years in which to earthquake-proof their properties. Wellington City Council granted the reprieve - as it faced the daunting prospect of finding the money to make sure its own portfolio of 400 buildings met the requirements of the 2004 Building Act. Mayor Kerry Prendergast said while the old code was designed to protect people’s lives, the new code was about securing buildings as well. “This is going to have a huge impact on building owners,” said Ms Prendergast, who was worried that it could spark a wave of demolition like that of the 1980s.”

With a bit of intelligent design and planning, we can have it both ways: retention of genuine heritage, and construction opportunities for new and exciting buildings, by quality contractors. And some strongly crossed fingers that the continuing collapse of property finance companies doesn’t extend to more construction companies as well. Just one proviso: No more D&B please.

The building, designed by local architects Architecture +, is proposed as the new home for Telecom in Wellington, as reported by NBR and the DomPost earlier this week, although in typical non-helpful fashion, neither acknowledged who the architect was.

Also being marketed recently are glassy new proposals situated between Lambton Quay and Kate Sheppard Place, just next to the bus-station,  which are an update on a previous scheme, by the same architects, as originally reported almost a year ago by WellUrban. Some hillside dwellers aren’t going to be getting much sleep if all these projects come off… 

Telecom have been on the hunt for some time for a new base in the capital, to concentrate their staff - at present distributed in several buildings around Wellington, including on Jervois Quay and also in Tory St. Those avid property watchers amongst us will have noticed that Ian Cassells, head of the Wellington Company, bought the Tory St buildings some months back, and so probably has a good handle on Telecom’s needs.

The building site, stretching from the Willis St New World Metro, all the way back up to Boulcott St by Antrim House, currently has some ‘relocatable’ apartments of hideous design up by Antrim House which will be removed to make way for the new ‘twin tower’ concept. It appears from the one grainy sketch leaked so far that the new building will sit on top of 50-52 Willis St as shown here, and probably swallow the old Airways House whole. That still leaves room for another building also rumoured, to slip into the void at 28-38 Willis St just to the north of this site. Munns Menswear are at 22-26 Willis St, well clear of this site. More on Cassell’s Telecom coup here.

The building as proposed progresses on from Arch Plus’s previous work at Conservation House in Manners St, where they refurbished the tired old carcase of the former badly designed movie hall, and have turned it into an environmentalist’s wet dream. In Doc House, filled  with chilled beams, stylish wooden battens, and the smallest waste baskets you have ever seen, the only touch of conservation missing is a few tui flying around, although given that DoC are prone to shooting off pukeko and the occasional extremely rare takahe, perhaps its all for the best. Its also a good fit for Cassells and company, as he’s keen to recycle and reuse wherever possible, to excellent effect at DoC and to lesser success in places in Cuba St.

The drawing as shown here certainly doesn’t do it justice, and indeed I’m not sure that the amount of press coverage was planned. The snaky green panes of glass, waving in and out on the facade seem to be the trick de jour, no matter who the architect is. Of interest in the finished building will be a potentially giant atrium, rising possibly 12 stories up from ground level where currently exists only deep plan gardens and retaining walls behind the existing shops. With a bit of luck and good management by the consenting authorities, a through walkway and publicly accessible lift up to Boulcott St should also be available. That’s one of the great things about Wellington - the enforced cooperation of large commercial tenants to share their hill-climbing vertical transportation with the general public. 

But it wasn’t always like that. Just a few years ago, when costs were cheaper, it was Transit who was dragging the chain, and saying the prospect of T Gully was an unlikely event, if memory serves me right. Presumably hands were slapped, heads were rolled, and - well, hell, after all, Transit is a roading body - they suddenly found a new-found enthusiasm for the previous ‘uneconomic’ route. So what is the reason behind the change from half way up a hill to down in the valley, and if it is such a good economic move, why didn’t they do it from the start? Well I’m no roading engineer and so can’t say for certain (Transit roading engineers: feel free to blog in anonymously with your reply), but at a guess: halfway up the hill was thought to be a better place in terms of orthodox road building, rather than in the shifting shingle at the base of the gully. It is an earthquake faultline after all, and the ground conditions are not good (witness washouts on the Paekakariki hills nearby, with thousands of tonnes of gravel ending up in the bedrooms of a motel - twice), and there is a small trickle / raging torrent (depending on weather) in the bottom. The section above shows the previous designated section along the route, while the picture below is the Otira Gorge viaduct (in Arthur’s Pass) designed by Beca and constructed / opened in 2005/2006 (and presumably more difficult ground than the Gully route).

Transit is now saying that they had it wrong before :

“The preferred route generally runs lower along the gully to reduce the height and number of large cuts into the hillside, meaning the risk of a landslide is reduced. Fewer bridges and culverts along the preferred route means there will be less obstruction to the natural movement of debris in streams during storms. This means that the overall risk of storm damage to structures as a result of debris build-up or washouts is reduced.”

They’re doing away with the viaduct across the faultline as well, using a large earth berm, so we won’t have anything as interesting as the picture above either, where the viaduct cleverly and delicately steps across the shifting gravel slope, the stream and the faultline all in one go; ending up on the other side of the valley while you motor happily on to your destination at Franz Joseph glacier, without barely noticing a thing.

No, here in the Gully route, the valley is wider, the traffic is heavier, the road is 2-3 times the width, and route is steeper, meaning that if you live in Kapiti and want this to become reality, you’re going to have to delve deeply into your pocket: because apart from weekends away in Waikanae, we Wellingtonians don’t want it. If we’re going to go further (and let’s face it, with the next stops being Bulls, Shannon, Palmerston North and Woodville, who can blame us), we’ll take a plane instead.

It is not something just confined to Wellingtonians either. Allegedly there are only 10 gas stations left in the whole of Manhattan, and queues get kinda ugly at times; or the bridge and tunnel folk get kinda edgy as they realise they won’t make it home on their remaining tank of gas. Same thing could happen here - except of course there is not quite so far to go. 

I suspect that the issue is not just to do with the price of fuel. Indeed, with the price of a litre of unleaded now at around $2.10 you might think that it would be a profitable thing to get into - but apparently not - profit is a slim margin at the pump. Perhaps it is more to do with the price of land driving up temptation to sell out for yet another tower block of yuppy flats - or perhaps it is more to do with the modern car - they just don’t break down any more. The old scenario of a gas pump out the front, and a garage out the back is as far gone as the bobby on the beat.

Nowadays, when a gas station is serious, they link into another whole world of retail, of glass walls and plastic signage, and oh god, if you really want to punish yourself, a drive-through Mickie D as well. Gas is just a sideline, a ticket to entry to another whole world of retail involving family-sized bags of potato chips, a wall of high-fructose colas, and a plethora of ford vs holden related branded baseball caps and mirrored shades. 

The architecture, such as it was, is fading away.  At one stage the gas station had its own architecture, a visible brand that was as recognisable as the logo itself, as recognisable as McDonalds’ mighty golden arches (now just confined to a squiggle on a paper cup or tv ad). Challenge (once part of the once-mighty Fletcher empire) had a tensile roof structure supported off steel trees and branches. Caltex had a huge star motif, and gung-ho architecture to match. Mobil used to have two enormous glowing white discs suspended seemingly from mid-air (actually just stuck to the soffit), and British Petroleum had a very green theme going on. Did I mention the old Go Well Go Shell? with their solid theme of red and yellow. Well nowadays there is nothing but red and yellow. 

But given a move by taxi companies and others to go green, when are we going to see an abandonment of traditional gas station architecture and a move towards a row of plug in sockets? Is it going to be that all we need is a large plane of solar cells on your own car roof? When are those last remaining station sites going to be redeveloped and arise again as a multi-storey building? Is that inevitable or is there going to be another way?

The epistle, despairing of a seemingly trival matter of re-arranging furniture, at first glance presents its concerns at a microcosmic scale.  Yet its modus operandi is equally complex.  It raises wider issues of sustainability with integrity, the limitations of current heritage regulations, and the potential contradictory aims of preservation when a building’s function is struggling to survive.  

Such issues appear to be a particular concern for churches – which have, for much of New Zealand’s colonial history, been a staple of our historical architectural livestock.  … But a recurring question of the late C20th and early C21st remains: how to revive falling congregation numbers (and the very viability of a parish building) and preserve our ecclesiastical heritage with architectural integrity?  Are these two aspirations necessarily in contradiction?

Karori seems a hotspot for such concerns: namely, what to do with a church, or how to rearrange it, for its survival.  Futuna Chapel, just around the corner from St Mary’s, has already had its insides traumatised (its crucifix stolen, the pews dismantled, and its religious purpose exchanged for that of a builders’ store …).  … and of course the shake up of its idyllic context, refashioned into the harsh realities of intense suburbification, isn’t something to write architectural letters home about!  Thank goodness then for the success of the Futuna Trust.  Send your cheque here …

The hard lessons learnt from Futuna’s upset insides though don’t appear to have carried that far down the road.  We thought the council too had understood, from its bitter Karori experience, that heritage listings in the District Plan need rigour (and explicit statements) to ensure that an interior,  its fittings, and furniture (those aspects of a building most susceptible to change and fashion - and perhaps the most critical for a building’s heritage integrity), are actually preserved intact.

Margaret’s letter though (printed below) proposes the current conflict over church and pew be stepped up a level – not only, she suggests, should the maintenance of heritage buildings require hearty doses of integrity, but, that we are fundamentally superficial when we don’t consider things at a larger scale.

Dear Sir

Re: St Mary’s Karori.
This church is included in the Wellington City Council’s list of significant heritage buildings. In a world faced with global (and theological) issues like global warming, sustainability and waste, and the West’s relations with Islam, the parishioners of St Mary’s are engulfed in a controversy about replacing the existing pews in the church with chairs.

From the point of view of sustainability, no case can be made for replacing the pews. They are in excellent condition. Many of them carry memorial brass plaques with the names of donors. Built of Australian hardwood, many of them date back to the building of the church in 1911 to a design by Frederick de Jersey Clere.

The argument for replacing the pews maintains that to halt declining numbers and ensure a future for St Mary’s, a more flexible seating arrangement is required in order to accommodate the needs of the young people. But for this or any congregation, it might be that discussion of global issues of concern to people of all ages could provide a focus beside which questions of seating would pale into insignificance and seem like wasteful self-indulgence.

Among your readers will be past as well as present members of St Mary’s who might like to respond with their views.

Yours faithfully

Margaret Alington

Karori

[Author of HighPoint: St Mary’s Church, Karori, Wellington, 1866-1991
Unquiet Earth; a history of the Bolton Street Cemetery
(1978); etc., etc.; ONZM] 

But enough self-indulgent puffery. We’re amused and bemused, but not bewildered that we have been ranked as a political website. But its not Party politics we’re talking here - it shows that debate about housing, roading, transport, and yes, even good design are all Political too. And probably the biggest political news here in Wellington this week is that once more the much-rumoured Transmission Gully reared its ugly head once more, with a Dom Post front page story one day “Gully route breakthrough” saying that it was highly likely (or certainly more highly likely than it was before - which was not very much at all). Quote of the month from our beloved afore-mentioned Peter Dunne (yes, he of the snide lip curl, curious hair curl, and unpopular blogsite) regarding the Gully was “This now really says, look, it’s all go“. D’oh ! Spoke too soon there, Peter - today’s headline says “Leaders see Gully Funding hurdles” and by that they are referring to a mere half billion dollar shortfall, and a complete lack of political will to tax the ratepayers to provide that shortfall. That lack of interest is especially notable from Wellington City Council, whose Mayor Kerry Prendergast has intimated that the Gully route is low on her list of priorities, and that she wants to get the City running smoothly first. Perhaps it is more realistic to say that the Gully is a pipe dream for the long distance commuters, and that a finished road will probably never see the light of day.  

Why? Well apart from the money, or lack of, there is the simple fact of it being steeper, and steep for longer (3 times longer) than the Ngauranga Gorge, so its never going to be that popular for trucks. They’ll always take the shortest, simplest route that they can. Coupled with that, it has to cross twisty earthquake faultlines, it has a route on shifty unstable soil, is 27km long through farmland, and more beside: but ultimately is doomed to failure through tolling. How so? Well, faced with a choice between a Toll Road, or a non-Toll Road, my hunch is that the average motorist will not be that keen to pay another $5 or $10 per day on top of the petrol bill, and enough will avoid it for it to make a huge loss. The other option would be for the ‘authorities’ to lump a toll on both the Gully and the Gorge - and guess how popular that would be! They’ll be driving en masse down through Khandallah’s Onslow Road in protest - and that’s really not going to help matters either. So in the mean time, I’m lumping it with Mother Goose and other fables, and will concentrate more just on our city by the sea, and getting there on public transport.