The almost 50-year-old Moana Pool helped drag Dunedin into the modern world.
Dunedin's Moana Pool is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It opened its doors to the public on November 14, 1964.
Planning for a new pool to replace the quaintly named ''Tepid Baths'' in lower Moray Pl began in the early 1950s, but a funding application to the Loans Board for 350,000 was declined.
Nonetheless, planning continued, and the first drawing of the proposed pool was produced in 1958.
This early drawing displayed a very different design to the revised proposal that was produced the following year.
However, both display strongly modernist design principles reflecting the visionary intentions of the architect to clearly align with the prevailing architectural language of the period.
The design was the work of the city council's architects and engineers, led by city engineer G. K. Armstrong and architect Bill Hesson, and was not without its detractors, alarmed at the arrival of such a starkly different architecture by now appearing in the midst of the city's much loved Victorian fabric.
However, Mr Hesson was unfazed by those who perceived it as a misfit.
In an interview conducted by University of Otago design student Tina Lee in 2002, he reflected that ''the sloping building I think is in harmony with the Dunedin landscape and all the surrounding hills ... I think the sloping walls help to mould it into the landscape of the hillsides.''
Mr Hesson also recalled the misgivings of a local architect during a tour of the pool not long before it was due to open:
''`Bill, what have you done?' ... But as soon as this chap got inside, he was amazed at the whole interior. It just came alive, mainly with the sun coming through the north wall, and the sparking water and the stainless steel. I was more than happy with the interior.''
So, too, were the public.
Throughout the opening day, enthusiastic crowds waited outside for their turn to try out the city's newest and boldest public amenity, without charge.
Mr Hesson commented that the free entry on open day ''was the worst thing the council ever did. Thousands flocked in up there and actually twisted the main doors at the entrance.''
Curiously, this enduring (and endearing) contribution to New Zealand's stock of high quality modernist architecture has received little (if any) attention from the country's architectural historians.
Although Moana Pool is now much altered from its original state, the bones of its architectural pedigree are still as strong and elegant as ever and they continue to anchor its ongoing utility and popularity.
Readers will no doubt be amused to know that Mr Hesson's mark is also still strongly apparent in the pool.
In order to produce the formwork for the fibreglass seating, he sat in the wet fibreglass, ''to get the bum contour''.
''Every single seat there is of my posterior,'' he said.
Planning for an exhibition to be held at Moana Pool in celebration of its 50th anniversary is under way.
Come to think of it, if the doors are up to it, what better celebration than another free day for all?
• Gavin O'Brien is a New Zealand design historian and senior lecturer in product design, Otago Polytechnic.
