"A blot on the landscape" is such a familiar concept that it has become proverbial.
If Dunedin is to retain its special visual character, we need to adopt and give the force of moral outrage to the idea of "a blot on the streetscape".
Like the landscape, the streetscape belongs to everyone, but there are different types of ownership, and balances need to be observed and carefully managed if they are to be compatible.
Streetscapes are comprised of individual components — houses, trees and gardens, roads, walls and other structures — that are owned by individuals or corporations. Sometimes those entities decide that their own needs would be better served if they were to cause something else to occupy the property.
The historic Haynes house at 284 Stuart St, built in 1919 and designed by Edmund Ascombe, has been demolished over the past few weeks. It was a fine heritage building, of a kind that no-one is building — or indeed can afford to build — any more.
But even more important than the value of its qualities as an individual building, it was a keystone in a prominent heritage streetscape, on a highly visible corner site, two blocks up from the Octagon, and seen by thousands of people every day, driving up and down Stuart St.
Now that it has been reduced to rubble, we need to consider what is to take its place.
We can be 100% sure whatever replaces this heritage house will not fit in with the surrounding buildings. We can be maybe 85% sure that it will be ugly.
Property developers, generally, have no interest in retaining streetscapes, because to do so costs rather than makes money.
So what they do, when developing in a (formerly or otherwise) heritage precinct, is to design something so different from the neighbourhood that comparisons seems ludicrous.
The modernist house in Claremont St, Maori Hill, which recently sold for $6.5 million and was described (ODT 18.2.26) as Dunedin’s most expensive house sale ever, is a case in point.
It is a "statement" house, and mainly looks impressive because it contrasts so strongly with the small, charming, understated houses in mature gardens that it stands alongside.
The University of Otago’s Centre for Innovation is another case in point. It is out of keeping with the clocktower and Castle St, but being a reflective glass structure it exploits the picturesque qualities of its neighbours.
Within a contrasting streetscape, such buildings are parasitic. A street of such things would be hideous and dehumanising.
So whatever replaces the Haynes house, and it has been reported to be a block of 30 apartments, might be an interesting building.
But if so, it will inevitably be an interesting building that looks as if it belongs somewhere else.
Streetscapes are seldom lost or destroyed at one time, any more than a landscape is. They are chipped away at, building by building.
The argument is that: "It’s only one old building — there are plenty of others," but no-one is building 110-year-old, architect-designed homes any more.
One missing or rotten building ruins a streetscape in the same way as one missing or rotten tooth ruins a smile.
Councils have a role to play in this. Everyone knows that the value of a property depends in large part on zoning.
If the zoning rules disallow some use or function that would maximise the money to be made from a property, then the property is worth less, and the owner or a developer has no financial incentive to "develop" (or demolish) it. They would pretty quickly figure out a way of putting it to productive use in its current state.
Dunedin needs to identify what architectural qualities give the city’s built environment its particular and increasingly rare character.
There is a tipping point beyond which we will no longer have enough continuous lengths of heritage streetscape to have a character worth valuing. We do not want to see how close to that tipping point we can get.
• Paul Tankard is an associate professor of English at the University of Otago.
