This posting comes about from reading in the Dominion Post the awarding of a development along the Wellington quayside to a local firm of architects, Athfield. This follows a competition, with several other bizarre proposals. This is a delayed posting, the letter was sent about one year ago, but it is a subject I would like to mention again. I have previously talked about modern architecture in my posting on Prince Charles. Remember too that I have posted a good number of pictures of Wellington and its environs already.

Do I truly hate modern architecture? I suppose the answer to that has to be, mostly, but not invariably, yes. Perhaps the question could be put the other way, is there any modern architecture I truly love? Indeed, is there any modern architecture truly loveable? The answer is probably no, certainly I cannot think of a single, modern building in Wellington that is in any way "loveable". Wellington has the misfortune to be a capital city with almost no notable architecture at all. The vast majority of major buildings are ugly high rise buildings of the last thirty years, with a motley architecture of older and very undistinguished buildings. . In the 1970s a building frenzy saw a huge number of old buildings, some of them of a very high architectural standard, razed to the ground, and the convenient excuse was that they were an earthquake risk. Even the St James Theatre was threatened and was saved by a last-minute rearguard action. I have mentioned this previously in my blog about Prince Charles, and how if the Wellington council had applied some of Prince Charles's principles we wouldn't have seen this destructive rampage, and we'd now be enjoying a rather more comfortable and engaging city.

Thinking of my feelings further, it's not that there's no good modern architecture, what would Sydney be like without its Opera House, or Bilbao with its Guggenheim Museum? But you'd be hard put to find anything as fine as that in New Zealand. I suppose when I look at old cityscapes, even the modest buildings had a sense of proportion, of ornament and human scale which makes them sympathetic accompaniments to daily living in the city. But I cannot say that of a single modern building in New Zealand. The new Meridian building along the waterfront is better than most, and one has to welcome, at last, a real attempt at incorporating high energy efficiency objectives in architectural design. You can forgive a good deal if you know the building is looking after us. And as for the glass towers in any city, they are almost universally simply ugly. They are ugly to look, mostly ugly to work in - they dominate the skyline with ordinariness and crassness. Occasionally a tower block might provide something rather better, for instance, the "Gherkin" in London does provide a more attractive focal point, if you have to have a glass tower.

A noted English visitor a year or two commented on finding Wellington such an appalling architectural area, I can't find the reference for this, but it got some publicity here, as you would expect. I had to agree with him. Wellington's saving grace is its situation alongside a beautiful harbour ringed by mountains and hills, preserved in large measure by the foresight of the City's Victorian fathers. The Parliament Buildings have a satisfactory grandeur, but as they're only half completed, there is literally something missing. The Beehive is certainly "iconic", to use this most overworked and now clichéed adjective, but as something beautiful it misses the mark by a long way. The Alexander Turnbull Library is fine, there is are a few lovely old wooden churches, including the Old St Paul's Cathedral, but its 1950's replacement is disappointing to say the least, and isn't even being looked after properly. The Old Bank Arcade and a few, isolated older commercial buildings certainly please, but are mere islands in a sea of mediocrity and crassness. Cuba Mall provides the only true al-fresco European style area in the city, with a reasonable sprinkling of unpretentious but characterful older buildings. The Quayside though does off some rather more pleasurable areas. Te Papa, the national museum on the waterfront, is a jumbled pastiche of modernist styles, and by turning its very unattractive and monolithic rump to our beautiful harbour, and the sun, it displays its worst, and most unforgivable, fault by completely ignoring this most glorious aspect, and sulks instead forlornly along its road frontage. It's entrance is almost apologetic.

A recent development along Willis St. reveals well our present day inability to create buildings of lasting worth, and our present-day perverted attitudes to beauty and ornament. An old Victorian veranda'd terrace was torn down, to be replaced by a tower block so ordinary as to not even be worth calling ugly, yet with a pathetic and demeaning nod to its past history, the veranda has been reinstalled along the modern road frontage, looking utterly and completely forlorn and orphaned, cruelly out of place and out of time, the architect's one-fingered salute to our past, and his or her utter contempt for it. But then you only have to look at the building that houses Wellington's School of Architecture to understand all this.

The most satisfying and characterful architecture is to be found in the inner suburbs, Mt Victoria, Newtown, Berhampore, Roseneath, Tinakori, Kelburn, Newtown, nice domestic architecture which fulfils a real need for comfort and familiarity, but which is still lacking protection from inappropriate development.

Dear Sir / Madam,

Why do I hate modern architecture? Is it its brutality, its macho in-your-face intimidation, its sexist antipathy to  femininity or grace?  Is it its mechanical predictability and SIM City triteness? Is it  its sharp angularity like a glass shard that holds itself against our better sensibilities, echoing our psychopathic underworld with its knife at its victims throat? I ponder these things as I gaze at your computer renderings of three proposed buildings for our water front. One, a glass box like any other glass box (another glass box, just what Wellingtonians crave); another, a giant passenger airport gangway hanging over an empty space reserved for alien spacecraft; and last, the compulsory angular architecture that is so Euro-cutting edge, where the unfortunate man walking up the  flight of stairs reminds me of the victim in the Pit and the Pendulum, with the walls ever more closing in on him. The building is "conceived as a contemporary fossil embedded in the harbour edge".  I have to agree; it is a fossil, an outdated and outlandish concept, fit only for future discussion about how our modern architecture represented the cultural values of its day. And isn't that the whole problem?

Yours faithfully,

You can gain a bit more detail about this proposal as reported in a Dominion Post article or Tom Beards excellent Wellington blog , click here. Don't you just LOVE the "the fossil concept, something found and exposed?" Or that the shed 10 building "is conceived as a piece of maritime infrastructure - trussed, technical, robust and wharfly"?).One priceless explanation from the architect that I did miss in my letter was that the "glass box" wasn't just another glass box, but was designed to mimic a pile of stacked containers on the waterfront!! Absolutely bloody brilliant. Why not mimic a bundle of rope, or a dead cat, or a discarded hamburger. But whatever you do as a "modern" architect, don't build a building that's obviously a building. How did we get to the state that architecture has abandoned so completely an adult, informed and artistic understanding of form, function and grace, to arrive instead at the kindergarten?

My disdain for most modern architecture is related to my disdain for our terrible urban planning in most countries, but abysmal here in New Zealand. Our capitulation to the motor vehicle is almost total. We suffer dysfunctional cities which, when oil prices soar again, which they will, will seize up completely. This message still has to get through to our leaders. Today (9/2/08) we hear of John Key's economic stimulation package - it contains some reasonable investments such as in schools, housing and electricity transmission, but also a large expenditure on new roads, and NOTHING AT ALL extra for public transport. This reneges on an earlier promise. Jeanette Fitzsimons, Green co-leader is quoted today:

Meanwhile, National's plan to accelerate the building of new state highways without a single additional dollar spent on green alternatives breaks an earlier promise from John Key that any infrastructure spending would include public transport.  

"Money spent on new roads generates less employment than money spent on fixing old roads or, even better still, money spent on increasing public transport services."  

The package does not deliver on the Prime Minister's statement last year that his plan would "take into accountŠthe need for public transport."  

"Investing in more roads, rather than better public transport services, will increase our oil dependence, increase our carbon emissions, and ultimately employ fewer people over the recession."

Continuing this them in regard to urban planning, I wrote another letter in April 2008 following the council releasing their plans for urban development (which as readers of this blog will know also include flyovers by the basin reserve) One counsellor was reported to remark "If we are lucky it will look like Paris"! My letter (unpublished) reads:

Dear Sir / Madam

Releasing their plans for urban development, a Wellington City councillor declares "If we are lucky it will look like Paris." What an overblown comparison, has this councillor never been to Paris, why not a more apt (but still inept) comparison with York or Pamplona or any of many other small historic European cities? And which part of Paris is envisaged, Montmartre or those banlieues and their dispossessed? Depending on luck hardly inspires confidence, Paris was designed by an inspired planner, Haussmann, with a sublime vision of how his city might look and work, and the means to accomplish this. Living in Wellington is pleasant enough, but with its Legoland third-rate architecture, its continuing history of architectural vandalism, and car-addicted infrastructure, how can we believe that there's anyone here who actually can plan? Whilst I truly welcome this belated recognition of the importance of a long term planning strategy, without a powerful vision of a sustainable and socially equable future, a sufficiently large monetary investment and a robust legal framework, a much more likely outcome of all this naive growth-predicated, high-rise, high-density development is a city rather more resembling Sao Paulo or Bangkok.

Yours faithfully.

But do I like living in Wellington? Yes, mostly I do. The people, the most important part of any city, are friendly and accommodating. The city is small and compact, and has a vaguely European air. I can travel by cycle, walk or bus to any central area from where I live, and not have to use the car, a great boon. The wind can get very annoying, but it does at least keep the pollution at bay. The harbour is very beautiful and grand, and when the sun is out and the wind is soft, it is truly Mediterranean, and when the weather worsens, and the clouds lower, and the hills become grey and the grey water is flecked with thousands of white horses, it is still a stunning situation. But the architecture is appalling, and the city's capitulation to the motor vehicle is still almost total. The city is good to live in , but it could be so much better.