It is deeply sad and rather ironic that the day that the submissions for the Gordon Wilson Housing Scholarship close wth NZIA, the Minister of Everything announces in his usual manner that the Gordon Wilson flats are now “gone burger”. 

I know that I may be preaching into the ether here, with no one else sticking up for them, but the ironic thing is that the Gordon Wilson flats are actually some of the best designed small apartments in the entire city, especially when compared to the basic shit that we are building these days. New offerings of apartments around town are pretty much either unredeemingly terrible, being small, badly designed and somewhat unaffordable – or decently sized, adequately designed, but massively overpriced and completely unaffordable. You really can’t win with new these days. Much better to refit existing.

What the Minister, the University, the Council, and most of the dreary-brained citizens of the city do not seem to be able to understand, firstly, is that the Gordon Wilson flats (lets call them simply GWF) look bad because they have had no maintenance done to them for years. Any of our many buildings in Wellington would also look bad if they have had no work done for years. Secondly – the building looks flat because it is made of concrete, and the concrete is spalling off on some external panels because the steel inside is rusting. The easy answer to this is of course to remove all these rusting panels and replace with GRP panels or aluminium panels, lightweight and brightly coloured as originally intended, and perfectly capable of never rusting. 

What people do also not understand is that, apparently, the university is still flat broke and has zero money for maintenance – but also has zero money for demolition, or for building anew. So, regardless of what laws are passed by the brown bishop, the uni will presumably still cry out that they can’t afford to demolish it and build again. So, overall, it still makes sense to keep it and restore it, rather than demolish it. It is not going to be going anywhere for quite some time, I would guess.

Why is the building so apparently “earthquake prone”? Well, of course the truth is that almost every single building in New Zealand is earthquake prone (EQP), because the Engineers changed the rules and so whatever used to be “OK” under the old rules, is now “Not OK” under the new rules. The implementation of the new Seismic Rules in NZ is a shit show in a fuck factory, as Logan Roy would say, and now nobody knows what is what. The GWF is a lot less EQP than the many other buildings in NZ, such as all the buildings still existing with brick walls. Bricks are not the friends you want in an EQ – and especially not in an EQP building. 

The GWF is made of concrete, so in theory it should be fine. The reason that it may not be fine is also something that cannot really be checked – what are the concrete foundations made of? No Engineer wants to sign them off as OK, because they can’t see down to the bottom of the concrete pour, and there are no sign-off slump test sheets from whoever poured the concrete at the time. There is a high likelihood that the concrete foundations are indeed all very fine, but that’s completely impossible to say definitely about anything. There is nothing to say that they may not be OK, but also nothing to say that they are OK…..

The reason that they are great is that instead of being a squalid, tiny, low-roofed slice of hell, like the Paddington, the Hyde Park, the Mayfair, the Soho, the Peak etc – all of which exist with low ceilings of just 2.4 or 2.5 or maybe even 2.7m if you pay enough. But these GWF enjoy a double height space for most of them, and so it is at least 5.4m or more from floor to the ceiling. They have space, and they look out into space, which others do not. They are all one or two bedroom in size, because that was what was wanted back then when they were designed and built. They are of course exquisite in their design – good basic European planning with bedroom upstairs and kitchen / living downstairs. Have a look at this video clip, rather ironically produced by the University.

They would be, if the Uni could pull its head out of its arse, be re-created as the perfect mature student flat. I could see a whole bunch of PhD students living there or visiting staff, leaving the Halls of Residence (or what ever they are called) to the baby students just there for a year. No drinking, no shenanigans, no worries, and some good PR for once.

Burgers are awful. But giant slabs of cheese are much nicer. Let’s ditch the Bishop Burger and instead try and persuade the University to do something good for once, and restore some heritage. New Zealand’s second best Modernist building. The Massey House has been saved and restored, beautifully, going by the latest photos from all its award-winning last week. Let’s do the same for the GWF !!

Fish

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