Heritage madness

Eric Crampton writes:

Ryman Healthcare wants to put up a retirement village in Karori, along with a pile of related services. They’ve bought the old Karori teachers’ college.

It’s a great site – easy land to build on, right on bus routes, an easy walk to Karori village and right next door to the Karori Swimming Pool.

But there’s a problem. The old Karori teacher’s college is apparently a great example of 1970 brutalist architecture, and New Zealand has a rather low threshold for applying heritage designations to buildings. Heritage New Zealand wants to impose a Category 1 listing on it.

That’s crazy. Firstly nothing from the 1970s can be regarded as heritage. 1870s maybe.

But more to the point the buildings are so ugly that if buildings were procreated even its mother would think it was ugly.

This is just madness. Heritage NZ seem to have lost the plot.

I have a small proposal. Until the housing crisis ends, no new heritage designations. If a building or site is of sufficient value, Heritage New Zealand should solicit donations so that it might purchase the site. The good people at Architecture Centre might chip in to buy the Karori teacher’s college as they seem rather fond of it. As owner of the building, Heritage New Zealand would then be able develop the site as it deems best.

I have another proposal. Rather than Heritage NZ continuously decide more and more buildings are heritage, we should only allow such designations say once a generation.

Say every 25 years there is a one year window to decide that an old building has now reached heritage status. You shouldn’t need it more often that that.