The Cultural Curmudgeon
Iconic blunders
by Hamish Keith
Aristotle or Socrates or another of those thoughtful ancient Greeks once put forward the proposition that literacy might not be an altogether good thing. Words could become a misleading substitute for experience. They may have been going a tad too far, but they were absolutely right if they were arguing that labels could be a substitute for thought.
The word iconic is a case in point. Any proposed building labelled iconic – in the bureaucratic mind at least – will turn out okay, no matter what it is for. Auckland has a proposed building labelled “iconic” in its Tank Farm redevelopment, despite the fact nobody has the faintest idea what it might be for. It could be an iconic abattoir or another bunch of iconic oil tanks.
Wellington’s proposed new international airport terminal had the word iconic hovering on every official lip. Ugly might have been better and inappropriate might have been kinder, but no less to the point.
Somewhere in the bureaucratic mind is the notion that iconic buildings are even better icons if they tell a story. This one, apparently, tells a story about the cliffs that gird Wellington’s coast. (Although it just as easily might be a parable about Cinderella, transportation and a ball.)
Since when has architecture had anything to do with narrative? Personally, I would settle for a building that efficiently sets out to do what it is built to do without intimidating the folk to whom it does it, which elegantly occupies the space it is built in and which is a good visual companion to its neighbours.
Not much to ask, but from this country’s architects hardly ever what we get. A notable exception is to be found further around the Wellington waterfront in Studio Pacific Architecture’s Kumutoto Site 7 building, elegance and appropriateness in spades without a tale to tell.
The international terminal building is not some one-size-fits-all development that might have a dozen uses during its life. It is an airport terminal. It has no burning imperative to be about rocks. The world is filled with great and elegant airport terminals, large and small. If invention failed, plagiarism would have surely done better.
But I could be wrong. In 1969, we laughed when Wellington unveiled Burren and Keen’s Bucket Fountain in Cuba Mall. It would take an army of iconoclasts to remove it now.
There may be some retro cult buried deep in Wellington’s civic psyche. The proposed terminal could easily be an iconic building from The Flintstones – Gateway to Bedrock, the Yabba-Dabba-Doo Town. The logical next step would be a Jetsons-inspired monorail from there to the buckets and we will know to whom these icons really are a shrine – those great cartoonists Hanna-Barbera. This is Wellywood, after all.
