The beauty of brutalism
Comment: News that Dunedin City Council supports the retention of the University of Otago's Archway theatres has been met with polarised reactions. Critics have variously compared the theatres to a toilet block and a maximum-security prison. The university itself wants the option to demolish the building.
It's clear the building's suit of unpainted, pre-cast, corduroyed concrete isn't appreciated by all. But I think demolishing the Archway theatres (built 1972-73) would be a mistake. For those unfamiliar with the building, it is a smart design, an exquisite example of brutalism, and its concrete embodies a lot of energy that – in these days of environmental consciousness – shouldn't go to waste.
I've taught in the building. I've been confronted by its massive concrete form. I've also walked through it with its architect, Ted McCoy (1925-2018), which only increased my deep appreciation of it.
The Archway theatres replaced the tennis courts that once fronted the university's Home Science Building (designed by Edmund Anscombe in 1920). Its name is rather perfunctory – identifying its location proximate to the Archway building. Such straightforwardness is an important part of the building's charm – and a vital part of brutalist architecture.
The cross-shaped plan of Archway Theatres. Photo: McCoy Wixon Architects
When the Archway theatres building was constructed, the intention was to demolish the Home Science Building. This would have given the Archway theatres a generous forecourt to the river Leith and a clear view of the planned Hocken (now Richardson) Building (1967-79). But it was not to be. Instead, the impossibly tight site meant that McCoy astutely positioned the four lecture theatres to create a cross-shaped plan, rotated 45 degrees to the former tennis courts. The raked under-croft of each lecture theatre flaunts a discourteous rear end to nearly every passerby.
Brutalism often gets a hard time. It is probably the most misunderstood architecture. Partly this is because the 'brut' in brutalism derives from the French term for raw concrete – 'béton brut'; partly because its ethos of honesty in construction often comes across as tough, hard, and unyielding, rather than simply frank. Brute force rather than the intended socially conscious truth.
Brutalism began with the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles (1952). Well-known local examples include Jim Beard's Hannah Playhouse (1971-73) in Wellington's Courtenay Place, and Bill Toomath's now largely demolished Wellington Teachers College (1966-77). That lost complex, and the buildings of Warren and Mahoney that were demolished after the Canterbury earthquakes, mean high-quality brutalist buildings have become rare in New Zealand.
In universities across the world, similar designs were built. This was the new architecture of progressiveness appropriate for places of research and learning. Brunel University Lecture Centre (Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners, 1965-66) – given cult status in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) – is one example. Closer to home is Chris Brook-White's strident F Block (1969-72) at the Central Institute of Technology.
The legibility of each Archway theatre is further reinforced by blue, super-graphic numerals embossed into exterior walls, denoting the pragmatically named Lecture Theatres 1, 2, 3 and 4. At each angle where two theatres meet, an entrance courtyard is formed. Sunken gardens are created to the east of the site, mitigating the vertical impact of the sloping ground.
Inside, a corridor links the theatres and circumnavigates the central service core. Along its inner wall, an abstract mural depicts the river Leith and its banks that meander through the university. At one point, a fish leaps up high. At other moments, campus features become geometrically refined into rectangles and curved deviations. This mural establishes a theme of movement that is also painted on the projection boxes protruding from each theatre back wall. Arrowheads converge. Pathways bend around fixed points. They represent what McCoy saw as the constant lifeblood of the university. Everyone moving, going forwards, sidewards, discovering new directions.
For brutalists, the building's exterior of rear-facing lecture theatres, projecting boxes and spiral stairways demonstrated a direct and proper connection between a building's form and function that enabled people to immediately comprehend architecture and was honest about it.
The volume of the building's concrete might also challenge some – but this volume also means that demolition will waste the high levels of embodied energy used to construct it. Cement production – one factor of the energy needed in concrete buildings – accounts for 8 percent of the world's carbon emissions, leading some UK engineers to oppose building demolition because it is unsustainable to replace.
We have few New Zealand buildings that thoroughly demonstrate international brutalism. McCoy's building carefully does this. But it also makes strong connections to its physical site and to ideas about what a university is. It depicts the University of Otago in its core. This makes the Archway theatres a rare building at Otago University and a particularly special one in New Zealand.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
a day ago
- Otago Daily Times
First step toward demolition of award-winning lecture theatre
A planner's recommendation could clear the way for the University of Otago to demolish an award-winning lecture theatre. As part of proposed changes to the district plan, the Dunedin City Council has identified 146 buildings which are protected under the heritage schedule. Following hearings last month, council planner Peter Rawson recommended six of the buildings be removed from the list, including the University of Otago's Archway Lecture Theatre. Archway lecture theatre: Treasure or toilet block? Mr Rawson accepted the university's view the theatres were no longer fit for education and refurbishment was not possible. The university's evidence indicated scheduling the building would have a high cost and "constrain their ability to operate efficiently and effectively". "Therefore, I consider that the costs of scheduling the Archway Theatres building outweigh the benefits, and it should not be scheduled as a heritage building." Vice-chancellor Grant Robertson said yesterday the university was "highly supportive" of the recommendation, which aligned with its submission to the hearing panel. In his written submission, he asked for the building not to be included on the heritage list, saying the university was considering demolishing the theatres and the neighbouring Gregory Building — possibly replacing them with a formal garden space. Victoria University of Wellington senior architecture lecturer Christine McCarthy opposed the building's demolition, and said the recommendation was extremely sad. "It is such a progressive, innovative and challenging building that embodies the ethos of what a university would hopefully be striving for. "It's a shame that these values don't appear to be appreciated and that the architecture has been only understood superficially and conservatively." The Archway Lecture Theatre building was built in 1974, designed by notable Dunedin architect Ted McCoy, and won a New Zealand Institute of Architects Southern Architecture Award for enduring architecture in 2020. Mr Rawson also recommended proposed protection be dropped for the Lookout Point Fire Station, saying scheduling it could prevent Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) providing a fit-for-purpose fire station. In October, the council granted a certificate of compliance for the demolition of the building and an unattached accommodation block, meaning Fenz had a five-year period in which it could demolish the buildings, regardless of heritage protection. Protecting the building could have the "perverse outcome" of encouraging Fenz to demolish within that period, Mr Rawson said. Council city development manager Anna Johnson said a decision on the heritage plan change was expected to be released next month. "The second hearing will address the remainder of the matters covered by Plan Change 1 and will likely be in August 2025 — a separate decision would be released for this hearing."
Otago Daily Times
3 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Town crying out for new town crier
PHOTO: YVONNE PICKFORD Hear ye! Hear ye! The town of Bluff is in need of a new town crier. The need has arisen after the town's previous crier, Justine Haenni, moved away recently. Ms Haenni was a valuable addition at many events, performing her role on various occasions both in Bluff and further afield, enhancing events and adding a sense of occasion to proceedings. As Ms Haenni has done in the past, anyone considering taking up the role would attend events in the Bluff Town Crier regalia and welcome guests, read short scripts prepared for the occasion, make announcements during events — anything that required speaking in public clearly and loudly. She was fluent in English, German and French so was ideally placed to communicate with a wide range of audiences but that was a bonus not a prerequisite, of anyone thinking of taking up the role, she said. The historical role of a town crier was to make public pronouncements in the streets, normally by ringing a bell to gain attention for the message they were about to deliver. Many towns around the world still had someone performing the role, these days as a unique feature at events and occasions.
Otago Daily Times
4 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Continuing a legacy
Providing a green space in suburbia where birds and insects can flourish is the aim of an Opoho couple, Louise Frampton writes. Located up Signal Hill Rd, Marianne Groothuis and John Dodd's property is nestled unobtrusively behind a boundary of tall native trees. Entering the driveway, a feeling of calmness embraces you as the hum of traffic is replaced by the chatter of birdsong. The wide, sweeping gravel path, a former driveway, is bordered with tree ferns, astelia and rhododendrons and a lush green canopy of native trees provides a haven for the birds. Among the trees are Northern rātā, Southern rātā, lancewoods, kōwhai, kauri, rimu, pōhutakawa and nīkau palms, sitting side-by-side with rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias. But when the house was built in 1932, a very different garden greeted visitors. Back then, a formal English garden was visible from the road. It had a circular pond with a fountain in the lower garden and stone steps, pillared by yew trees, leading up to the symmetrical flower and rose beds nestled in the expansive lawn above. A row of flowering cherries ran along the top of the garden in front of white-painted trellis. But all that changed in 1959 when the quarter acre (1000sqm) property was bought by Doug Campbell and his wife Ann. Campbell was a geologist and botanist at the University of Otago and put a lot of the natives and trees into the Opoho property, as well as at his holiday home in Warrington. "He was a passionate collector of rare native plants, but he hated the formality of the English garden," Dodd says. "He did his absolute best to subvert [the formality] without actually removing anything." Many of the remnants of the formal garden are still hidden among the natives, such as the sundial, stone steps and all of the long-lasting trellis. Many flowering cherries were removed, but a few remain among the rhododendrons. "He called the [flowering] cherries the 'poodles of the plant world'," Groothuis says. Among the natives the botanist planted is a kauri tree. Dodd says it was about 1.5m tall when he and Groothuis bought the property about 25 years ago. "Apparently it was gifted to Doug by a geology student who was working for a mining company in Coromandel. A road was going through and the little kauri was going to get ripped out so this student rescued it and brought it back to Dunedin for Doug. "It would be about 30-40 feet (9-10m) tall now." There is also a special scree garden where Campbell planted his cuttings and seedlings from his geology adventures. "He would gather scree from the area and place it around the plant," Groothuis says. Campbell is no longer alive, but an extract from his obit written in 2001 sums him up well: "Doug was less concerned about the appearance of his garden. His interest was in the plants themselves. Each one had a story, either related to where he had collected them on geology trips all over New Zealand, or [related to] a research question he had about the variation in leaf shape and size. He had speargrass, native brooms, shrubby coprosmas, little gunneras, and the occasional special celmisia. He wanted to bring tūī and bellbird around the house and was always on the lookout for good nectar-producing species." Campbell must have known his garden was in good hands when he sold the property privately to Dodd and Groothuis in 2000, especially since Groothuis is a curator at the Dunedin Botanic Garden, responsible for the camellia collection. Her love of camellias spills into her home garden as well, where some of her favourites are planted, such as Camellia transnokoensis, native to Taiwan, and Camellia yunnanensis, from China. She also has a hedge of 30 white-flowering Camellia 'setsugekka', which are coming into flower now. Also in her home garden is her "outdoor office", a special area nestled in the bottom of the section surrounded by natives, where she has a table to pot up seedlings and cuttings, for other areas of the garden, or to sell at the gate. Dodd is a talented double bass player as well as a guitarist and singer-songwriter. He plays in many different musical lineups, often touring the country. He's also a former music teacher at Logan Park High School and, like his wife, has a love for the garden. "This garden is my personality and John's personality, Groothuis says. "We both love it and we have firm discussions when something needs to be removed or planted." Dodd says there are always messy parts. "I would probably like it immaculate." But Groothuis likes the "scruffy" habitat that encourages the birds and insects. "We really love the birds and I really love the fact that it's scruffy enough to encourage lots of insects and wildlife," she says. She especially likes to keep the dying leaves facing down on the cabbage tree trunks – "it's something that cabbage trees only do in the colder climates to protect themselves", and she says it also makes a great habitat for insects. Since moving in, they have planted a mataī, a rimu, three nīkau, pohutakawa, kakabeak, the Chilean myrtle Luma apiculata, rata, kowhai and ''lots of tree ferns''. The couple say most of the work involved is getting the weeds under control, and pruning the trees to allow the light in. "We do get arborists in to help thin out the trees," Groothuis says. Their most treasured area is the window seat in the lounge. It gives a magical view of the entire front garden. Close to the window, a witch hazel is in flower and a Japanese pagoda tree has been trimmed back to create room to hang bird feeders from the trellis. The antics and interactions of the tūī, kererū, bellbirds and waxeyes can be admired close-up from the comfort and warmth of the lounge. "We've almost constantly got a bird [on show]. Our two kereru often sit there and just hang out," Groothuis says, adding the window seat is an ideal place for reading or recuperating. There are sometimes up to six tūī at the feeders. "You can just sit here for ages watching." As Dodd and Groothuis approach their 25th anniversary of owning the property in October, they say they are proud to have continued the previous owner's work. They have a huge respect for Doug Campbell. "He was in this [property] for about 40 years and his legacy is still alive," Groothuis says. "We really love that the garden is about big trees and natives and [we love] the joy that comes from it being a little [bit of] wildlife in suburbia." The garden is in good hands.
