Remember the ceremonial bridge the University of Otago wanted to spend $1 million on (back when $1m was a lot), simply to increase the university’s "prestige"?
They are at it again and wanting to demolish teaching space simply in order to create a faux Oxbridge-like lawn.
To compound this poor decision, the teaching space they want to demolish is the wonderfully Brutalist Archway lecture theatres.
Now I love Brutalism. But some people hate Brutalism. And that’s OK. Neither opinion is right or wrong; aesthetics are subjective. But love it or hate it, it needs to be protected.
Indeed, it is the hate part of that spectrum of opinion towards significant buildings that is an important part of exactly why some of such buildings need protected. Destroying character buildings simply because some people dislike them, will leave us with just characterless bland cookie-cutter buildings.
Tastes change and many heroic or iconic buildings have gone from widespread praise to being hated within a generation and are destroyed because of this.
In the 1950s Otago’s now iconic, historic clock-tower building was proposed to be demolished as a dowdy old unsafe building. Luckily university management disagreed and preserved it, or the Otago campus could have looked like the Cadbury factory buildings. Literally a cookie-cutter vista.
Brutalism is a significant architectural form, especially for public buildings, and it is strongly symbolic of the post-war consensus and cradle-to-grave welfare-state era — a great era of New Zealand, where we were world leaders in many things.
That is important and comforting heritage to me, and a massively important part of the country’s history.
The Archway theatres are the only strongly Brutalist buildings left on the campus. While much is made of the protected Richardson building, that is more of a modernist building that has some elements of Brutalism, notably the raw concrete finish.
Archway is more faithful to Brutalism by being a more minimalist construction and clearly showcasing structural elements over decorative design.
In the words of NZ Institute of Architects, the Archway theatres are "architecture that is different and special", and "speak to a moment in our architectural history" and "remains an accomplished work of significant merit".
Some see a building with a strong architectural style like Brutalism being close to the historic Gothic-revival "Clock-tower" precinct as a problem. And that is a fair concern.
But like the original architects, planners and university management of the time, I disagree it’s a problem. The Archway theatres are separate to the Gothic-revival precinct, and they do not affect the very vast majority of views of the Gothic-revival precinct’s vistas.
The Gothic-revival precinct can be viewed from most directions without seeing the Archway theatres at all.
Further, the Archway theatres are not of a size or scale that they impact on the Gothic-revival precinct, and they no way overwhelm the Gothic-revival buildings by scale.
Heritage is not simply just about very old things. The separate precinct area south of the historic Gothic-revival precinct (i.e. which contains the Archway theatres), also contains a selection of various aged and various styled buildings.
This architectural diversity makes a fine narrative of the university’s, and indeed of the country’s, public architectural development history, and all in close proximity.
There are layers of history and heritage, and it would be a mistake to erase this piece of strong Brutalism from this narrative.
The university is justifying the proposed demolition by pointing out that "flat-floor" teaching space is the way of future education and that lecture theatre style teaching will decline. While this is indeed the current speculation and trend, firstly, we are far from that future. And nor does this changing trend mean that lecture theatre style teaching will ever stop entirely.
The university relies heavily on them and often has no spare theatres of this size to use as an emergency substitute if a theatre is made unavailable (this situation will be much worse with the loss of the four Archway theatres).
If it was proposed to replace Archway Theatres with a new teaching space, the shift to increased "flat-floor" teaching might be relevant here. But it is not. The proposed replacement is a lawn.
Replacing usable teaching space with a lawn seems poor use of taxpayers’ money.
While traditionally Archway 1-4 are not the most comfortable lecture theatres, they have been refitted over the years and have better acoustics than when I was a student. They are well-equipped with up-to-date as modern audiovisual facilities as good as the other of the university’s theatres.
Yes, the passageways are narrow and dark and can indeed have a maze effect (though I personally thought this effect was part of the charm; never knowing quite where you’d exit the building after having your brain’s battery drained by either a boring or interesting lecture).
However, both these issues could be relatively easily fixed by gutting the centre of the building and creating a lobby with a clear roof.
Any plant that is needed relocated could be relocated under the voids under the building’s seating areas, and appropriately visually screened off with a dark material so as to not affect the aesthetic.
You can’t save every old building, but this one has significant heritage values in its context and still has a much-needed use — hence making it into a lawn is a waste of resources.
— Mark Baxter is a life member of the Otago University Students Association.
