"TE ARO REBUILT"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 456, 19 March 1948, Page 16

"TE ARO REBUILT"

The Story of an Exhibition

[FF replanning of Wellington’s business area has been discussed often enough, but students of the Wellington Architectural Centre's Summer School carried the matter a stage further in their recent exhibition, "Te Aro Rebuilt," by expressing their ideas in plans and models. The importance of their work is discussed in the accompanying article, written for "The Listener" by E. A. PLISHKE

HE purpose of the Wellington | Architectural Centre Summer School in preparing their Exhibition "Te Aro Rebuilt" was to put before the people of Wellington a problem, and to indicate that a solution, though possible, is by no means easy or obvious. | The problem, by means of charts, photographs and models, is stated thus: 'How can the business quarter of Wellington be designed and built so that its | technical functioning and its architectural order and appearance will be as near perfect as possible? The aim of the students has been to create public discussion, and their Exhibition has been a challenge to the intelligence and public spirit of the citizens as well as to the efficiency of the city’s administration. Elsewhere, in a more detailed discussion of this problem, I pointed out that a town planning architect should have complete understanding of the present and future needs of a modern town. And from these requirements he should, if he has vision and foresight, create a world of order and dignity; an aim which takes us far beyond the sphere of civil engineering. It demands the interest and support of the whole community. The appearance of a town reflects the state of mind of its inhabitants in the way a house, a garden or a room does. Modern towns as we know them are the result of uncontrolled growth. In a young country such as ours the history of urban settlement is simple. Most of the larger settlements in New Zealand adopted from the first the gridiron pattern, at that time used all over the world, as a layout for their streets. This was an easy way out, for the pattern could be extended indefinitely, and growth did not demand any readjustment of plan. It was neither particularly imaginative nor very thorough. Such a "master-plan" could be applied to any town anywhere in the world. And the

business quarter of Wellington, Te Aro, is an example of just such a plan which developed haphazard and uncontrolled. Awakening the Imagination The proposal by these young students for designing and rebuilding the business area of Wellington is the first of its kind in New Zealand to give the public a lively and well-portrayed idea of modern town planning trends’ abroad. It tries to show the people of Wellington how beautiful and exciting their town could be. A dream? Not altogether, I think. At any rate, it is not a sleeping vision, but rather a day dream, a musing on what might be, forgetting the uglinesses that are. These architectural students have been able to walk through the streets oblivious of the ugly buildings, seeing already in front of them clean big buildings, open spaces, fine vistas. The dream is not entirely their own, and of course they have never pretended it was. They use freely photogtaphs and ideas from Europe and America to help express and supplement their vision of what a modern metropolis should be. Other members of the Architectural Centre with practical experience in plan‘ning or design were somewhere in the background. We madé suggestions and gave advice when we saw that in their boundless enthusiasm the students were laying themselves open to the shafts of unfriendly criticism. It has been said that the proposal is too general, too ambitious in scope and conception. But such criticism misunderstands the meaning and purpose of the exhibition. The idea has been to waken the imagination and ambition of the citizens of Wellington; not to deal with politics and economics. The political and economic aspect is only the short-term day-to-day view. Ad hoc considerations and decisions are by no means the most practical, and certainly don’t get the best results. One has only to look at the haphazard and _ inefficient

growth that mere expediency has forced until now upon the development of Te Aro. Vision, of course, in these days of pragmatism, expediency, shortsightedness, ugliness and banality is looked on with profound mistrust. But I cannot think it altogether an act of wayward fancy to contemplate (from the Museum Hill or Washington Avenue) the present unlovely wilderness of Te Aro and try, in imagination, to shape something really pleasant and exciting. | Architecture and Open Spaces The Exhibition consists of two parts; the first is concerned with zoning and the traffic problems of the Te Aro area, The students have studied existing conditions closely. Their findings have been set out in a large: map showing how the land is used, and in a telling display of diagrams and photographs with® explanatory texts. For example: "Housing: Who says we have no. slums." "Traffic: Through traffic congests our main shopping streets; no special space for off-street parking." "Open spaces: This is all we could find." (A map of Wellington is displayed above this heading with a few tiny green dots.) The new zoning plan’ provides first that "all heavy industry must leave the city"; only service and light industry have been included. , Other zones are shopping, entertainment, civic affairs and administration in the centre, with gq recreation area on the outer parts of Te Aro. New arterial roads form the framework of the zoning plan. The second part of the Exhibition tries to convey an idea of the architectural possibilities of Te Aro rebuilt. Neither of the two parts can achieve much on its own. For the best intentioned modern zoning plan prepared by a civic or government authority has practically no influence at ‘all on the ultimate appearance of the district, The gridiron pattern used for the ground plan of Palmerston North, for example, has not produced the same architecture as the gridiron pattern of New York. Yet it is a widely-held misconception that a good zoning and roading plan will create a beautiful town. Architecture expresses itself in buildings, and is experienced through the eye: it is impossible therefore that a schematic plan of roads and zones can have more than an ordering influence on the look of a town, But it is obvious also, that architectural conceptions as those proposed 0 in the second Exhibition, are possible only when they are founded on a far-sighted modern zoning and roading scheme. This has been recognised by the combination of both aspects in one exhibition, . ‘No Sentimental Lapses In the centre of the architectural section of the Exhibition is a large model which gives us a clear overall idea of the proposal. Besides this, ten working groups have dealt in more detail with specific aspects of the scheme. But no matter what aspect the different groups have been concerned with, nowhere do we find a romantic or sentimental lapse into picturesque reminiscences of past periods or architectural styles. The spirit of the Exhibition is a straight-out declaration for the contemporary~ approach in planning and architecture. Although some mention is made of the beauty and efficiency of old European

squares, as soon as the students come to plan the Civic Square for Wellington the modern scale of buildings is accepted, not out of a desire to impress by sheer size, but to continue what has grown about the neighbourhood of the Square. The new buildings are in scale with the Evening Post building and the Dominion building just opposite. The new heights of the buildings demand a new width for the square; and, this, together with modern methods of construction, gives a new scale and a new thythm, The result, in a word, is modern architecture. This Civic Centre proposal (a part of the general project) deals with a matter new, up till now, (continued on next page)

"TE ARO REBUILT"

(continued from previous page) @o all town-planning in New Zealand: the relation of,open spaces to the buildings that surround them; with enclosed and sheltered squares for individual purwuits and for civic occasions. But still ‘another problem has been @pened for discussion. Four groups out of the ten have devoted their attention to the residential areas. Parks or Gardens It is notable that the bungalow is not the unit from which they start. But large multi-unit blocks of high population density are dispersed among wide green spaces, parks and sports grounds. This is very different from the usual New Zealand standard of dwelling. In the heart of Wellington a suburban residential scheme with one-eighth of an acre to each house is clearly an anachronism. Indeed most of the old houses in this district have long ago been turned into boarding houses and flats-an economic consequence of the mounting value of the land. Every big city in the world faces this problem. And if there is any solution, it can only be made by approaching the difficulty in a broad and a .

open scale, in some such way as the students have set about it. For my part, I can never quite see why discussion of this topic generates such heat, The issue is plain, and! the decision one of individual preference. Either one can travel daily to Trentham or Eastbourne or Porirua to enjoy one’s own garden, or one can live in a flat in a park near the centre of the town. Economic circumstances force the choice on most of us. It is not possible any longer to have a house with a garden in the town. There are many other controversial problems put forward for discussion in the students’ proposal. But let us hope that the Exhibition has succeeded in penetrating,

at least, the indifference that Wellingtonians (in. self-protection, no doubt) assume towards their surroundings. I am sure that some of them have had their minds stirred to imagine the

possibilities of a modern town with its feeling of spaciousness and openness, its rhythm, order and scale. If the Exhibition has achieved this, the great effort

‘ and work of the students has been well spent, and it may well be looked back on as a decisive moment in the development of Wellington,