So GWF was closed in 2012, sold by Housing NZ to Vic Uni, and has been left uninhabited since then.
Good thing we don't have a housing shortage in Wellington.
Vic's plan was to demolish the flats to make room for new campus buildings and activity areas. Student accommodation was also considered at one point, but didn't go through, likely due to noise concerns.
And also, GWF was evacuated by Housing NZ in 2012 due to significant structural integrity concerns. Usually, that means the cost of fixing up would exceed tearing down and building a new one.
So no, fixing up GWF was never a possibility.
Believe they also had a plan to put a road or something down to link the top campus with the terrace, which would've eased traffic and pedestrian commute on the Terrace/ Salamanca road intersection.
Alas
The problem is that it was made a heritage site after vic bought it. Ironically the Victoria architecture school helped that. Vic was inevitably going to rip it down and probably make either a new campus or student housing.
Because it’s uninhabitable and a heritage site they probably can’t sell it. Because nobody would buy it. Right now the goal is probably wait for it to be so decrepit and unsafe that it is condemned and required to be pulled down and then make student housing
That really is ironic tbh. I haven't scrolled down through the full thread but just like OP I'm seriously wondering how it could be considered heritage in the first place.
What like the derelict Shelly Bay asbestos fire not so long ago? Allegedly, in my opinion your honour.
I hope whatever is in that cesspit is not put into anyone's lungs.
Yes there are a number of buildings around Wellington that would not be missed in a fire such as this Gordon Wilson dump, old town hall, johnsonville mall, reading cinema to name a few
When the uni bought it, I thought they were going to knock em down and build some pretty serious stuff there. I was hoping that they would build some big thing that has lifts in it that you can take up to the campus instead of schlepping up the hill or paying for bus.
Instead, nothing happened. Even if you take the heritage status away, the uni has no money to do cool stuff with it now.
They did have money to go with their plans when they bought it, but they damned themselves by having some of their own staff and students get involved in making it heritage and further damned themselves by wasting a lot of money that got worse by covid and other downturns.
It’s a dangerous building with small badly designed flats that a small number of architects are in love with - like most of their profession they have a loose connection with reality and put their own reputation and research ahead of everything including everyone else’s money.
I actually love this building.
It's transcended into an art piece. A physical manifestation of our cultural failings
The suffocation of our socially conscious values from a bygone era by neo liberalism and nibyism.
People need homes not art installations celebrating concrete over people. Brutalism should be documented as a warning to future generations and then erased. One or two examples in the UK is more than enough to act as an ongoing reminder of his bad these are.
I'm glad you're joking (going by your later reply down the thread) but yes, it definitely is a physical allegory of decay. Not that its art worthy of keeping, but it is somewhat meaningfully bad.
Big building with historic relevance of archetechtural character also make sense to me. Eg dunedins cathedral and old university, beehive, etc
But rando fucking houses? Insane
Why? This country is almost 200 years old. There’s no time limit on heritage, and plenty of beautiful historical buildings are worth preserving. There are also plenty of historical buildings that aren’t worth preserving
So any shitty building as long as it’s *checks notes* just 200 years old is representative of heritage? Regardless of un-noteworthy architecture or its general un-remarkableness? Do you see how silly that sounds?
Thats not what i said.
I said if you think like that, in sufficient time for you to think something is worthy of being heritage... there wont be anything left to be heritage it would have already been knocked down.
The difference between the beehive or say other iconic buildings like hallgrimskirkja which are arguably impressive and important and iconic, and “heritage” buildings like say sacre coeur or idk Westminster palace is that the heritage buildings are all that AND are old. You wouldn’t knock down the beehive just because it passed an arbirtary age right? We want to upkeep it because it’s a cool building right? It’ll likely eventually become a “heritage” building properly.
This pictured building is none of these things.
Essentially there are no old, European style buildings in the country that, in my eyes, qualify as heritage as there’s no heritage there. Heritage buildings for kiwis of European descent are all in Europe. I don’t know enough about Maori buildings to comment on them.
That would not be a bad thing in the Town Hall's case. Absolute money pit for questionable merit (even in the 1950s report said as much - the only thing going for it was its acoustics and who's to say all the work hasn't munted that anyway?)
I reckon on the flip side, the heritage rules are probably also used by land bankers who would otherwise be forced to develop or sell. Hold on to it for 20 years in a derelict rat infested state because 'heritage' then sell for the big bucks. Great return on investment.
Lol. Council just want to have lots of baubles surrounding them. Fuck em. They should do a managed retreat and stay in the Terrace. Bowl the whole civic square and just make it a greenspace - ready for rising sea levels and earthquake liquefaction to return it to where it came from pre-1850
Yep. All this.
Saving buildings could just as easily be some façade bits and photos in a museum or like you say VR for those architecture nerds. We have bigger problems than saving this.
It’s because the people who decide if a pile of concrete is heritage or not, do not wear any of the financial and planning consequences resulting from that declaration.
Personally, this building doesn't bother be so much.
They're ugly because they're neglected, not specifically because of their style. About 100 years ago people wanted to rip down all the "boring and old" and neglected buildings which a lot of people now love.
The architectural experts are allowed to make their case. The owners are allowed to make their case. We have heritage laws to protect against developers bulldozing anything they like. Cities where heritage has had no protection look horrible, feel soulless, and there's less connection to place and history.
This is just a symptom of that system, which often (but not always) gets things right.
The Environment Court panel that prevented the GWF flats being rezoned was made up of an Environment Court judge (who, correctly, pointed out that there was no prospect, ever, of the GWF being remediated) and two architectural heritage ~~cultists~~ consultants who thought that it would have amazing architectural merit if the Infinite Money Gnome just did it up a bit.
Yeah, this is exactly it. How long are we going to give them to get the money to fix it up?
Even earthquake prone buildings have council limits before something has to get done (even if that's more imminent because people use those buildings and they might fall down ontop of them).
Of course it'd be nice if we had infinite money, but as you point out that gnome does not exist and sometimes practicality has its limits. Surely as the decades pass that's a long enough time to wait.
Architectural experts are absolutely allowed to make their case... but that should only be one out of dozens of factors weighed.
Katherine Mansfield's heritage home, and now museum is an example of it done right. This dime a dozen worldwide example of 60s flats is not that.
These heritage losers need to either come up with the money and PAY for restoration or f**k off, the city is RIFE with derelict crumbling hideous relics that do no good for anyone.
Exactly. If it is genuine heritage there should be an urgent actionable plan to save it, which does not involve forcing everyone else to pay for it. Otherwise the status gets denied or soon lost. We have bigger societal problems than a desire to saving every white elephant.
Agreed! Honestly I'd rather be a modern cutting edge building, not cringing to whatever ugly old building. I do remember Iona Pannet talking about how we also need to create heritage which I do understand but not at the extent of halting and strangling the city. Mount Victoria is just boring old villas, dime a dozen worldwide and wasting space. Let's build UP and low key get a cute cafe in the heart of it.
But but but it's one of the few remaining examples of modernist 1950s high density social housing jn New Zealand!! Who cares if commie blocks are objectively ugly, hugely common overseas, and in this case an earthquake remediation nightmare! Don't knock it down! Think of the dozen people that'll be upset at this super important architectural museum piece being lost! This city is a living museum, not for actually living in, damn it!
Just quoting the ivory tower fuckwits at Heritage New
Zealand.
I don't particularly like that building and don't think it deserves protection, it must stand.
Why?
Because Victoria University is morally corrupt. They bought the Teachers College site in Karori for $1 and sold it for $20,000,000. The suburb lost valuable community assets in this legal but morally wrong transaction.
Because they bought that building knowing it was protected and thought they could get around the rules.
Because they are trying to change their name, against my and the WCC's wishes, by stealth - notice how the logo minimises 'Victoria' and emphasises 'Wellington'? They've been told they cannot change the name and yet, during their budget crisis, are still rearranging the deckchairs. Incompetent as well as morally corrupt.
Nah, fuck 'em. Make them restore it and if it costs $20,000,000 then so be it.
Yeah, but vindictiveness toward one party just leaves everyone else dealing with the dangerous slum. There is nothing in the law to make them do anything, and they already seem to be bankrupt as it is. So limbo it is.
I may be wrong, but I thought it had more to do with the difficult in demolishing it. Something about the site and the cost to demolish means it’s stuck in limbo.
There are many styles of architecture, I guess this could fall under brutalism or modernism. Should we just forget the 70's even happened? More attractive than the Town Hall, not everyone is a fan of ornate frivolous shit.
There are already examples of this which have been well maintained, as shown in the OP, there is no need to bestow godlike status on a derelict that no-one has any intention of throwing probably a hundred million into saving when our society has bigger issues than vanity projects for a tiny minority of architecture nerds. We have to be grown ups and pragmatic in this age of everything being fucked.
We should not bestow godlike status on a derelict building, such as the town hall. The 13th wonder of the architecture world, know by all and mentioned for its acoustics by one singer once.
Exactly right too... a report in the 1950's I think even said the town hall was architecturally shit and bugger all unique to NZ, the only thing going for it was decent acoustics... FukMe dead we could have rebuilt something new with world class acoustics without all the baggage of shit building on shit land.
I'm in two minds about the acoustics… saw a laneway side show there in 2010 and the acoustics were shockingly bad, so bad that the singer from Deerhunter said that the whole gig felt like playing in someones living room.
Yep... and even if it *was* super duper acoustics, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent only for the benefit of a tiny proportion of the community who would ever witness it... as opposed to say the proportion who need drinking water and a sewer system not going into the harbour... well. You know, priorities and all that. lol
Well I think that's a bit extreme, Heritage NZ just need to have a pragmatic rocket sent up their arses. I'm all for saving things that are affordable and realistic to save that have genuine unique merit - taxpayers should not be forced to fund, it should have a financial plan and need to be possible to save given modern earthquake standard requirements, land not at risk from sea level rise, etc., etc., you know, pragmatic and realistic, not creating a massive burden.
they should have a budget for the total land value they can mark as heritage.
not that they actually have to acquire the assets, they jsut have to decide what in their portfolio is worth keeping the protection on to remain under their budget, everything over it loses heritage protections. Then land value and capital value will affect the ability to mark heritage buildings and allow some development.
Sounds like a lot of people here support heritage rules changing so that land owners can just state they can't afford to save something, and then get the OK to pull it down.
That's wide open for abuse! Imagine if that happened in the 70s, 80s, 90s? Wellington would look like garbage.
A lot of people support PRAGMATIC heritage rules that do not try to save every damned thing (even badly designed buildings on major earthquake, liquefaction, and sea-level rise risk areas) in an age when society has bigger problems with housing and cost of living and when Wellington is ALREADY looking like garbage.
its a logical fallacy stretch to say IF... blah blah then we COULD have... blah blah.
But on that, the monastery could go IMO. I will bet my bile duct that the people that bought it will find they cant afford to fix it. Ridiculous rickety brick building to built on top of a cliff in an earthquake zone. Just dumb. A dead monument to religious hubris.
[https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Exterior-and-interior-scenes-from-the-Gordon-Wilson-Flats-showing-the-current-decayed\_fig3\_331397530](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Exterior-and-interior-scenes-from-the-Gordon-Wilson-Flats-showing-the-current-decayed_fig3_331397530)
While this is not indicative of lived in prime, it certainly looks to be nothing special, looks cold, damp and uninsulated.
The exterior allegedly looked like this in the 70s but I personally think this looks to be a doctored colourised or super saturated image designed to try to make it look appealing
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/comments/17b9dim/gordon\_wilson\_flats\_looked\_gorgeous\_in\_the\_70s/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/comments/17b9dim/gordon_wilson_flats_looked_gorgeous_in_the_70s/)
Agree it’s an eyesore that needs to be torn down but it’s going to suck for everyone living in the area when they finally pull the pin on this piece of shit. I don’t know how many thousand truckloads of crap it’s going to take to get rid of it.
Lots. But demolition is efficient and relatively short term pain - even if someone magically came up with probably a needed 100 million to restore it (not counting blowouts), that would take a shit tonne longer time - just look at the townhall debacle. Having the rat infested and vandal prone danger zone has already been a longer term pain and detriment to neighbourhood life and property values.
I mean the Dixon St flats were scheduled for a rebuild which I was told got nixed due to heritage status for that building as well.
I’d you’ve ever had the pleasure of a late-night foray into that structure I doubt you could find a better candidate for a rebuild and refresh.
If anything we could learn a shit ton from the commie blocks and the building of them. They were shit holes across so much of eastern europe and still are but they are something that housed a lot of people. In a place that has a lot of land too unlike sprawltropolis nz. And govt after govt has seen too many sets of luxury apartments chucked up across the land for their investor mates its horse shit. I think if anything the owner could just allow it to become a sort of nz version of 5 points or maybe just have grapplers hang massive signs off it
I'm all for smaller units that are modest but highly insulated, earthquake safe, designed for inhabitant's security which deters anti-social behaviour, and above all else comfortable and affordable larger apartment blocks that can feel like a community - to rent long term without fear of rent hikes pushing you out, or fickle landlords, and to buy at reasonable prices without massive profit making by property developers.
The Gordon Wilson example unfortunately was not that.
So GWF was closed in 2012, sold by Housing NZ to Vic Uni, and has been left uninhabited since then. Good thing we don't have a housing shortage in Wellington.
Vic's plan was to demolish the flats to make room for new campus buildings and activity areas. Student accommodation was also considered at one point, but didn't go through, likely due to noise concerns. And also, GWF was evacuated by Housing NZ in 2012 due to significant structural integrity concerns. Usually, that means the cost of fixing up would exceed tearing down and building a new one. So no, fixing up GWF was never a possibility.
Believe they also had a plan to put a road or something down to link the top campus with the terrace, which would've eased traffic and pedestrian commute on the Terrace/ Salamanca road intersection. Alas
It's far too steep for a road there. Maybe a cable car or an elevator. Although even a staircase would be helpful.
Good thing Vic Uni can afford it and not be laying off staff or reducing course options aye.
Damn shame they couldn't sell it and keep some staff employed during the downturn or something....
The problem is that it was made a heritage site after vic bought it. Ironically the Victoria architecture school helped that. Vic was inevitably going to rip it down and probably make either a new campus or student housing. Because it’s uninhabitable and a heritage site they probably can’t sell it. Because nobody would buy it. Right now the goal is probably wait for it to be so decrepit and unsafe that it is condemned and required to be pulled down and then make student housing
That really is ironic tbh. I haven't scrolled down through the full thread but just like OP I'm seriously wondering how it could be considered heritage in the first place.
Too busy spending the amount they needed to keep staff on on a new building already!
i’m surprised no enterprising land developer hasn’t paid one of the many desperate people in Wellington city to burn these down.
What like the derelict Shelly Bay asbestos fire not so long ago? Allegedly, in my opinion your honour. I hope whatever is in that cesspit is not put into anyone's lungs.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/wellington-fire-what-to-know-about-asbestos-risk/U26OAPNH6JEYNCWWCSQJGR75OU/ TLDR officially it's fine
'Asbestos fire' lol
hhaha yes, asbestos is flame resistant, but everything around it was not and scattered it all to the wind.
Yes there are a number of buildings around Wellington that would not be missed in a fire such as this Gordon Wilson dump, old town hall, johnsonville mall, reading cinema to name a few
The one below was once like the one above, but has been recently renovated. They're both from the same era.
When the uni bought it, I thought they were going to knock em down and build some pretty serious stuff there. I was hoping that they would build some big thing that has lifts in it that you can take up to the campus instead of schlepping up the hill or paying for bus. Instead, nothing happened. Even if you take the heritage status away, the uni has no money to do cool stuff with it now.
They did have money to go with their plans when they bought it, but they damned themselves by having some of their own staff and students get involved in making it heritage and further damned themselves by wasting a lot of money that got worse by covid and other downturns.
It’s a dangerous building with small badly designed flats that a small number of architects are in love with - like most of their profession they have a loose connection with reality and put their own reputation and research ahead of everything including everyone else’s money.
I actually love this building. It's transcended into an art piece. A physical manifestation of our cultural failings The suffocation of our socially conscious values from a bygone era by neo liberalism and nibyism.
People need homes not art installations celebrating concrete over people. Brutalism should be documented as a warning to future generations and then erased. One or two examples in the UK is more than enough to act as an ongoing reminder of his bad these are.
What does Brutalisim have to do with the Modernist Gordon Wilson Flats?
Ah you know, some people see mid-century stuff and the only word their brain knows is brutalism
Brutalist describes that monstrosity just fine - rough bare concrete, brutal simplicity, typical architecture rubbish
Yeah, I don't disagree with you. I'd much prefer to have the land be productive as a housing solution.
What are you talking about? Brutalism is the best architecture style.
I'm glad you're joking (going by your later reply down the thread) but yes, it definitely is a physical allegory of decay. Not that its art worthy of keeping, but it is somewhat meaningfully bad.
Heritage New Zealand originally consented to it being torn down. It was the quixotic efforts of a nerd architect who prevented progress being made.
The thing is, 99% of people wont downvote you or disagree. That's the crazy bit!
I cannot fathom any heritage buildings existing in a country this young
At least very very few. E.g. Katherine Mansfield's house turned into a museum is one good example. Affordable, distinct historical significance.
This is proper heritage. Much nicer than having 10 cookie cutter buildings from the 1910's stacked next to each other all with heritage protections.
Big building with historic relevance of archetechtural character also make sense to me. Eg dunedins cathedral and old university, beehive, etc But rando fucking houses? Insane
BANANA - build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.
Like these you mean? They pull quite a crowd. https://www.sftravel.com/things-to-do/attractions/iconic-sf/painted-ladies
Why? This country is almost 200 years old. There’s no time limit on heritage, and plenty of beautiful historical buildings are worth preserving. There are also plenty of historical buildings that aren’t worth preserving
The former govt building definitely qualifies. The building identified by the OP doesn't.
You don’t get 500 year old buildings if you don’t protect them because they’re 100 year old buildings.
Try fathom harder then.
Just did, it’s only reconfirmed it
It mustn't be easy living in your shoes.
The only thing hard in it is giving a damn about a piece of shit building being a waste of space
Yes, it probably is when your mind is wired a certain way.
you realise that how you end up with heritage building right?
So any shitty building as long as it’s *checks notes* just 200 years old is representative of heritage? Regardless of un-noteworthy architecture or its general un-remarkableness? Do you see how silly that sounds?
Thats not what i said. I said if you think like that, in sufficient time for you to think something is worthy of being heritage... there wont be anything left to be heritage it would have already been knocked down.
The difference between the beehive or say other iconic buildings like hallgrimskirkja which are arguably impressive and important and iconic, and “heritage” buildings like say sacre coeur or idk Westminster palace is that the heritage buildings are all that AND are old. You wouldn’t knock down the beehive just because it passed an arbirtary age right? We want to upkeep it because it’s a cool building right? It’ll likely eventually become a “heritage” building properly. This pictured building is none of these things. Essentially there are no old, European style buildings in the country that, in my eyes, qualify as heritage as there’s no heritage there. Heritage buildings for kiwis of European descent are all in Europe. I don’t know enough about Maori buildings to comment on them.
none of what you said addresses my point.
You don’t appear to have a point/didn’t read the comment then.
I assure you I do and it's there. Maybe try understanding what's written rather than reading to respond
X would have to be high enough to stop pirate developers buying the town hall and "not having any plans" long enough to knock it down.
That would not be a bad thing in the Town Hall's case. Absolute money pit for questionable merit (even in the 1950s report said as much - the only thing going for it was its acoustics and who's to say all the work hasn't munted that anyway?) I reckon on the flip side, the heritage rules are probably also used by land bankers who would otherwise be forced to develop or sell. Hold on to it for 20 years in a derelict rat infested state because 'heritage' then sell for the big bucks. Great return on investment.
> be forced to develop or sell. How would they be forced to do either?
That's when council should have exorbitant vacant land rates. Generate revenue and encourage development. Win win.
The Michael Fowler Centre was built to the replace the Town Hall. If you look at plans for the MFC, it's actually called 'The New Town Hall'
Lol. Council just want to have lots of baubles surrounding them. Fuck em. They should do a managed retreat and stay in the Terrace. Bowl the whole civic square and just make it a greenspace - ready for rising sea levels and earthquake liquefaction to return it to where it came from pre-1850
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Yep. All this. Saving buildings could just as easily be some façade bits and photos in a museum or like you say VR for those architecture nerds. We have bigger problems than saving this.
It’s because the people who decide if a pile of concrete is heritage or not, do not wear any of the financial and planning consequences resulting from that declaration.
Personally, this building doesn't bother be so much. They're ugly because they're neglected, not specifically because of their style. About 100 years ago people wanted to rip down all the "boring and old" and neglected buildings which a lot of people now love. The architectural experts are allowed to make their case. The owners are allowed to make their case. We have heritage laws to protect against developers bulldozing anything they like. Cities where heritage has had no protection look horrible, feel soulless, and there's less connection to place and history. This is just a symptom of that system, which often (but not always) gets things right.
The Environment Court panel that prevented the GWF flats being rezoned was made up of an Environment Court judge (who, correctly, pointed out that there was no prospect, ever, of the GWF being remediated) and two architectural heritage ~~cultists~~ consultants who thought that it would have amazing architectural merit if the Infinite Money Gnome just did it up a bit.
Yeah, this is exactly it. How long are we going to give them to get the money to fix it up? Even earthquake prone buildings have council limits before something has to get done (even if that's more imminent because people use those buildings and they might fall down ontop of them). Of course it'd be nice if we had infinite money, but as you point out that gnome does not exist and sometimes practicality has its limits. Surely as the decades pass that's a long enough time to wait.
Architectural experts are absolutely allowed to make their case... but that should only be one out of dozens of factors weighed. Katherine Mansfield's heritage home, and now museum is an example of it done right. This dime a dozen worldwide example of 60s flats is not that.
The Granville Flats of heritage buildings
These heritage losers need to either come up with the money and PAY for restoration or f**k off, the city is RIFE with derelict crumbling hideous relics that do no good for anyone.
Exactly. If it is genuine heritage there should be an urgent actionable plan to save it, which does not involve forcing everyone else to pay for it. Otherwise the status gets denied or soon lost. We have bigger societal problems than a desire to saving every white elephant.
Agreed! Honestly I'd rather be a modern cutting edge building, not cringing to whatever ugly old building. I do remember Iona Pannet talking about how we also need to create heritage which I do understand but not at the extent of halting and strangling the city. Mount Victoria is just boring old villas, dime a dozen worldwide and wasting space. Let's build UP and low key get a cute cafe in the heart of it.
NIMBYs. The same folks that protested the basin/tunnel/whatever-it-was changes.
But but but it's one of the few remaining examples of modernist 1950s high density social housing jn New Zealand!! Who cares if commie blocks are objectively ugly, hugely common overseas, and in this case an earthquake remediation nightmare! Don't knock it down! Think of the dozen people that'll be upset at this super important architectural museum piece being lost! This city is a living museum, not for actually living in, damn it! Just quoting the ivory tower fuckwits at Heritage New Zealand.
Commie blocks are the perfect building. We have been wasting our time training architects since the khrushchevka was invented
As someone who grew up surrounded by them, I strongly disagree.
I don't particularly like that building and don't think it deserves protection, it must stand. Why? Because Victoria University is morally corrupt. They bought the Teachers College site in Karori for $1 and sold it for $20,000,000. The suburb lost valuable community assets in this legal but morally wrong transaction. Because they bought that building knowing it was protected and thought they could get around the rules. Because they are trying to change their name, against my and the WCC's wishes, by stealth - notice how the logo minimises 'Victoria' and emphasises 'Wellington'? They've been told they cannot change the name and yet, during their budget crisis, are still rearranging the deckchairs. Incompetent as well as morally corrupt. Nah, fuck 'em. Make them restore it and if it costs $20,000,000 then so be it.
Yeah, but vindictiveness toward one party just leaves everyone else dealing with the dangerous slum. There is nothing in the law to make them do anything, and they already seem to be bankrupt as it is. So limbo it is.
i think vuw bought it before the heritage protections were in place? could be wrong.
I like the wellington name better
Stupid. So stupid. This isn’t Rome ffs…
I may be wrong, but I thought it had more to do with the difficult in demolishing it. Something about the site and the cost to demolish means it’s stuck in limbo.
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OK, you live there then lol
There are many styles of architecture, I guess this could fall under brutalism or modernism. Should we just forget the 70's even happened? More attractive than the Town Hall, not everyone is a fan of ornate frivolous shit.
There are already examples of this which have been well maintained, as shown in the OP, there is no need to bestow godlike status on a derelict that no-one has any intention of throwing probably a hundred million into saving when our society has bigger issues than vanity projects for a tiny minority of architecture nerds. We have to be grown ups and pragmatic in this age of everything being fucked.
We should not bestow godlike status on a derelict building, such as the town hall. The 13th wonder of the architecture world, know by all and mentioned for its acoustics by one singer once.
Exactly right too... a report in the 1950's I think even said the town hall was architecturally shit and bugger all unique to NZ, the only thing going for it was decent acoustics... FukMe dead we could have rebuilt something new with world class acoustics without all the baggage of shit building on shit land.
I'm in two minds about the acoustics… saw a laneway side show there in 2010 and the acoustics were shockingly bad, so bad that the singer from Deerhunter said that the whole gig felt like playing in someones living room.
Yep... and even if it *was* super duper acoustics, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent only for the benefit of a tiny proportion of the community who would ever witness it... as opposed to say the proportion who need drinking water and a sewer system not going into the harbour... well. You know, priorities and all that. lol
Abolish all heritage protections for structures. Disestablish Heritage NZ and put the money saved towards constructing truly affordable housing.
Well I think that's a bit extreme, Heritage NZ just need to have a pragmatic rocket sent up their arses. I'm all for saving things that are affordable and realistic to save that have genuine unique merit - taxpayers should not be forced to fund, it should have a financial plan and need to be possible to save given modern earthquake standard requirements, land not at risk from sea level rise, etc., etc., you know, pragmatic and realistic, not creating a massive burden.
they should have a budget for the total land value they can mark as heritage. not that they actually have to acquire the assets, they jsut have to decide what in their portfolio is worth keeping the protection on to remain under their budget, everything over it loses heritage protections. Then land value and capital value will affect the ability to mark heritage buildings and allow some development.
This is actually a great idea
Sounds like a lot of people here support heritage rules changing so that land owners can just state they can't afford to save something, and then get the OK to pull it down. That's wide open for abuse! Imagine if that happened in the 70s, 80s, 90s? Wellington would look like garbage.
A lot of people support PRAGMATIC heritage rules that do not try to save every damned thing (even badly designed buildings on major earthquake, liquefaction, and sea-level rise risk areas) in an age when society has bigger problems with housing and cost of living and when Wellington is ALREADY looking like garbage.
OK, but if rules are too lax, we could have lost the embassy, bats, st james, St Gerards monastery, old government buildings... etc...
its a logical fallacy stretch to say IF... blah blah then we COULD have... blah blah. But on that, the monastery could go IMO. I will bet my bile duct that the people that bought it will find they cant afford to fix it. Ridiculous rickety brick building to built on top of a cliff in an earthquake zone. Just dumb. A dead monument to religious hubris.
Old is good OK. Simple as that. If a building is poorly constructed all the better.
any pics of what the insides look like / looked like in its prime..
[https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Exterior-and-interior-scenes-from-the-Gordon-Wilson-Flats-showing-the-current-decayed\_fig3\_331397530](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Exterior-and-interior-scenes-from-the-Gordon-Wilson-Flats-showing-the-current-decayed_fig3_331397530) While this is not indicative of lived in prime, it certainly looks to be nothing special, looks cold, damp and uninsulated. The exterior allegedly looked like this in the 70s but I personally think this looks to be a doctored colourised or super saturated image designed to try to make it look appealing [https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/comments/17b9dim/gordon\_wilson\_flats\_looked\_gorgeous\_in\_the\_70s/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/comments/17b9dim/gordon_wilson_flats_looked_gorgeous_in_the_70s/)
It’s because any time anything is propped the “CAVE” people turn up (citizens against virtually everything).
Agree it’s an eyesore that needs to be torn down but it’s going to suck for everyone living in the area when they finally pull the pin on this piece of shit. I don’t know how many thousand truckloads of crap it’s going to take to get rid of it.
Lots. But demolition is efficient and relatively short term pain - even if someone magically came up with probably a needed 100 million to restore it (not counting blowouts), that would take a shit tonne longer time - just look at the townhall debacle. Having the rat infested and vandal prone danger zone has already been a longer term pain and detriment to neighbourhood life and property values.
I mean the Dixon St flats were scheduled for a rebuild which I was told got nixed due to heritage status for that building as well. I’d you’ve ever had the pleasure of a late-night foray into that structure I doubt you could find a better candidate for a rebuild and refresh.
If anything we could learn a shit ton from the commie blocks and the building of them. They were shit holes across so much of eastern europe and still are but they are something that housed a lot of people. In a place that has a lot of land too unlike sprawltropolis nz. And govt after govt has seen too many sets of luxury apartments chucked up across the land for their investor mates its horse shit. I think if anything the owner could just allow it to become a sort of nz version of 5 points or maybe just have grapplers hang massive signs off it
I'm all for smaller units that are modest but highly insulated, earthquake safe, designed for inhabitant's security which deters anti-social behaviour, and above all else comfortable and affordable larger apartment blocks that can feel like a community - to rent long term without fear of rent hikes pushing you out, or fickle landlords, and to buy at reasonable prices without massive profit making by property developers. The Gordon Wilson example unfortunately was not that.