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From issue: Winter 2004

Preservation Should Start Now

Douglas Lloyd Jenkins makes a case for getting in early to protect modern buildings from changes in fashion and looks at three modern university buildings he rates as worthy examples.

The Otago University Library. Photo: John Gollings

When should a building first be eligible for listing? Are we waiting too long and losing the best of our architectural heritage? Are we preserving survivors rather than key examples? Certainly, Auckland's remaining Victorian structures are survivors rather than those we might have chosen from the full range had it been available to us.

In Dunedin, where the survivors are of high quality, a school of thought believes many of the best Victorian buildings were lost in the 1960s and 1970s, long before their importance was recognised.

The Maths and Computer Science Building, Canterbury University. Photo: Duncan Shaw-Brown, University of Canterbury

Perhaps the time has come to move heritage to the front of the queue and list key buildings fairly soon after the first coat of paint has dried. Many readers of Heritage New Zealand will be familiar with an English organisation called the Twentieth Century Society. Founded some years back as the 1930s Society, its aim was to prevent the destruction of Art Deco buildings in a period in which those fell outside the interest of English Heritage or the National Trust. Renamed the Twentieth Century Society, it now fights to save 20th century built heritage.

In New Zealand, listing, restoring or preserving a building tends to be considered after about 70 or 80 years and, in many cases, no action is triggered until a building hits a milestone such as a centenary. Thus, the candidate buildings usually have been much eroded. Sadly, the big loss is usually the original interiors, which have long since fallen victim to changing fashions. Structural changes often mean irreplaceable original materials are lost and cannot be replaced.

What would happen if we started listing buildings built recently, while still intact and still as their architects intended them? One of the Twentieth Century Society's recent campaigns has been to encourage preservation of 1960s' and 1970s' buildings built on university campuses, a period when universities were often at the forefront of architectural innovation.

This focus should be interesting to New Zealanders. Some very significant buildings were built on campuses across the country at that time. Awareness of the architectural importance of these buildings has already come too late for two examples at Auckland University. KRTA's School of Engineering and the MoW-designed Maths and Chemistry building have recently fallen victim to unsympathetic alterations, having stood unchanged for nearly 40 years. Any future restoration will be difficult if not impossible.

The changes happen in a period after buildings have lost their first glow but before they come under the preservation radar. The argument usually goes that buildings of this age have outlived their economic usefulness and need to be updated. That argument seldom withstands real examination. What say heritage organizations got in first, thus ensuring a higher level of preservation for key university buildings? The opportunity as far as many 1960s' buildings are concerned has been missed but what of more recent campus architecture?

The 1990s saw many New Zealand universities undertake extensive building programmes similar in scale to those of the 1960s. Because universities now face considerable competition for students, they have all undertaken branding exercises. This process has lead to the discovery that distinctive contemporary architecture is an effective way of attracting staff and students. The result is that much recent architectural innovation has taken place on university sites. Most are structurally innovative, expressive in form, and have high quality contemporary art works integrated into their structure. Then there is the tendency of the universities and their architects to proudly announce new buildings as future proof - highly adaptable to new technology. Let's take them at their word and make these impressive buildings really future proof from their biggest threat: simple changes in fashion.

Three immediate candidates come to mind. The Maths and Computer Science Building at Canterbury University (1995) by Architectus, the Otago University Library (2001) designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, of Los Angeles, and the Adam Art Gallery building (1999) designed by Athfield Associates at Victoria University of Wellington. Each of these buildings is important in its own way. The first represents a key building by what seems likely to be the first really important 21st century architectural practice in New Zealand. The second is an excellent example of the new-technology-conscious library and the third a prime example of the way we exhibit art now.

Together, these buildings represent contemporary university life in the same way as the older buildings of Otago University, now much revered, tell us of 19th century architectural life. If the good people of Otago University kick up a fuss at suggesting their fine new library be preserved intact as it stands now, they could be referred to their own ad campaign - get over it.

Footnote:

The New Zealand Historic Places Trust does not use a notion of minimum age for the entry of an historic place on the Register. A New Zealand working party for the Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement (DOCOMOMO, an international nongovernmental agency) met in April at the Trust's national office at Antrim House in Wellington and proposed to formally establish DOCOMOMO in New Zealand.