Hideous
January 20th, 2010 at 8:11 pm by David FarrarI saw the finished Supreme Court building for the first time today. I’d been out of Wellington for a couple of weeks, and since being back hadn’t had occasion to going past it.
Now I had heard some pretty uncomplimentary things about it, so I wasn’t expecting to be impressed. I thought it would be maybe like Te Papa – bland and uninspiring.
But it is far worse than that. It is truly hideous. I don’t think I have seen a building before with no redeeming features. The exterior up top looks like barbed wire from a distance. The windows are dull. The pillars add nothing, and it is again just hideous.
In case I have not made myself clear, I do not think you could design a more hideous building if you actually tried to. If there was some global competition for hideous buildings, then the Supreme Court building would be a finalist beyond doubt.
The monstrosity surrounding the building is meant to be “a bronze screen depicting the strength, durability and stature of the pohutukawa and rata tree”. Only if you have taken P recently.
It is such a pity. I visited the Israeli Supreme Court and they have a magnificent building.
So I wondered what moron approved the design of this hideous beast, let alone $80 million of our money on constructing it.
What did Rick say at the time about the design:
“This is a building of great significance to New Zealand as it will serve our country for at least 100 years. The design incorporates the old and the new. Once constructed the Supreme Court will be an architectural legacy,” Rick Barker said.
I hope it doesn’t last 100 years. If we are lucky an earthquake will strike Wellington and destroy it. And the only architectural legacy it will leave behind is to teach design students what not to do in the future.
UPDATE: Oh my God. Rick Barker put out a press release this week boasting about how great the building is:
The new Supreme Court sitting alongside the refurbished Old High Court is a fine blend of the old and new, the Yin and Yang, says Labour Courts spokesperson Rick Barker.
“Each is an outstanding piece of architecture reflecting the different times in which they were designed and built. The architects have delivered a great refurbishment and a new building that will stand the test of time.”
The man’s mad. How can anyone look at that building and call it an outstanding piece of architecture.
Commenting on today’s opening of the new Supreme Court building by Prince William, Rick Barker said the original drafts he received when Minister for Courts were for a plain building.
Which would have been fine.
“But I wanted to see a new Supreme Court that personified the special place which our Supreme Court is and should be. I was prompted in this by travels in the United States where each town and city had two special buildings, City Hall and the local court house. They represented a clear statement of the value that the community placed on civic responsibility and the administration of justice.
“My brief was for a building that would stand the test of time as we are unlikely to build another in the next 100 years. It should be a reflection of the architecture expected at the beginning of the 21st century,” Rick Barker said.
Barker is actually taking personal credit for the hideous monstrosity. That’s like taking personal credit for shitting in the Harbour.
“It was to be a special place and a statement of the value our community placed on the administration of justice, with a courtroom that befitted the highest court in the country. I wanted a building of which a future generation would say — they did a fine job.
Future generations will wonder if the building was some sort of expensive practical joke. None of them will say they did a fine job.
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January 20th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Have you seen the way the man dresses? Doesn’t that explain why he thought the design was alright.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
The weird lattice will do for faux Moorish decoration if NZ goes Muslim and the supreme court goes sharia.
Until then it can reminds us of the turmoil in the unlucky world abroad, resembling as it does the anti-rocket safety frame around a light armoured vehicle (LAV).
Seriously, wow. The architect was obviously inspired by a project at his kids’ play school.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
That doesn’t excuse it, but maybe it explains why they couldn’t afford the watchtower look to go with the barbed wire look.
But you are partly right,
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Tour guide to Wellington visitors in 2020:
“And so visitors, looking at these buildings, you can see how Wellington gave rise to the new architectural trend or school of New Zealand — the Tepaparazzi.”
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Key could be a diplomat.
“Breathtaking inside,” he says.
Vote:The outside?
“No, the inside.”
What about the outside?
“Well, art is in the eye of the beholder,” says Mr Key. “Look, it’s okay, but I prefer the inside.”
January 20th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Prince William probably thought “Open it? Are you sure I’m not here to blow it up?”
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Hey David
Vote:Your Israeli Supreme Court looks like a nuclear bunker, a fort with skinny windows to shoot arrows from and to pour molten lead onto the invaders below. It has a biblical look which is a look the Jewish people have pretty much cornered. What architectural style would you have prefered – and please, not neo-classical….
January 20th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
The hideous building is a by product of the senseless and delusional Klarkula Era and is your typical feminazi snake pit look. The white elephant is a gin palace for the Dame and her twisted cronies to swill themselves into bliss with socialist champagne; meanwhile the struggling tax payer is forced to fork out for the pious and corrupt judges with another obscene pay increase. The prince should have opened the stupid cess pit with a noisy fucking jack hammer.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Maybe it’s time they stopped practicing and looked for another job.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
The building has been designed in accordance with sustainable design policies and with low energy use in mind.
Vote:At least the greens will be happy, we have disposed of six months worth of scrap metal.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Imagine if it looked like this…
Australia’s High Court…
http://www.hcourt.gov.au/images/main.JPG
or really push the boat out like the what the Americans have…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USSupremeCourtWestFacade.JPG
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Guantanomo Bay?
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
I’ve thought this was going to be hideous right from the time I first saw the first architectural sketches were released before they broke ground – and sadly it is every bit as hideous as I’d feared it would be. Frankly, the new extension is a boring box made of cheap materials with no finesse and covered with what looks like scrap metal.
Just because someone is an architect doesn’t mean they have a sense of design or style. It just means they went to university for 5 years.
That said, as that nice Mr Key said, the interior is quite breathtaking. I wasn’t expecting that. And the old building has scrubbed up very nicely.
Maybe we could have got the designer who did the interior to have a lash at the exterior too? What a pity we couldn’t have got a more creative designer, given them a bigger budget, and built something that we could be proud of, not something we wince at.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Stop worrying readers, they have simply forgot to take the scaffolding off. I’m sure what’s underneath will be a spectacular tribute to the architect…
http://www.freefoto.com/images/13/44/13_44_58—Scaffolding_web.jpg
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
This was the original brief: “People are always complaining about lacklustre government architecture, even saying that the Beehive is the worst building in Wellington. I want you to design something that will prove them wrong.”
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
If Rick Barker had resurrected Adolf Hitler I doubt your post have been more stinging! Ouch.
Given the enormous price tag and small size it would be interesting to compare its cost on a $/square foot basis to other buildings.
I have passed that building many times during construction and always assumed that they were going to add something to the barbed wire to make it amazing. Gold leaf or something. But, no, that’s it.
I’ll add this building to the $10 billion deficit as another of Labour’s awful legacies.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Maybe a psychologist designed it – a more effective deterrence than three strikes, it may sublimely put us off wanting to end up at court.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
“Hideous”, better hope you don’t end up in it then.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
I meant subliminally. Sublime it is not.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
And in a touch of irony, the building has been designed physically in such a way as to literally make justice open and transparent – whilst the burning justice issue of the moment is name suppression – go figure
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Did you actually enter the building and go into the Courtroom?
If not I would suggest you do, and then give your opinion.
[DPF: Oh the interior may well be fine. But 1000 times more people see the exterior as the interior on any day]
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
The inside is actually quite good. A really different design, which looks good and seems practical. I am not sure about how well it relates to NZ though.
The screen looks a lot better looking from the inside out as well.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Build by Mainzeal.
Drector of which is Dame Jenny S.
Do you have her cleareance to slag off her companies fine workmanship?
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
My comment this morning at 8:33 on the General Debate thread:
“The exterior of the new $80m Supreme Court building in Wellington is an architechtural embassment. (I haven’t seen anything of the interior.) It has all the charm of Soviet-style edifices of the 1960s.
I wait with a sense of anticipation for an impressive round of design awards from the nation’s architectural elite, and for cub journalists to begin breathlessly calling the building “iconic”.”
This sad building epitomises the familiar modus operandi adopted by the Clark/Wilson/Cullen axis to tamper with fundamental constitutional structures and symbols:
- abolish appeals to the Privy Council (without a mandate)
- establish an instant Supreme Court (without a mandate)
- appoint all inaugural Supreme Court judges (without bipartisan involvement)
- “design” and construct a Supreme Court building in haste (without public insight or endorsement)
- pass a repugnant, anti-democratic Electoral Finance Act (power corrupts)
- and so on, and so on, and so on …..
This leopard never changed its spots.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
You people are fools! uncultured swine!
Vote:Don’t you see this is the ultimate in restorative justice? The design is symbolic of the female genitals, the great “mother vagina” of the nation.
The “pubic” lattice work is symbolic of our unshaven natural beauty as a nation, the front doors? ,the labia of justice – all those that pass through them have the opportunity of rebirth, a second chance to defeat the shafts of life.
Such a masterpiece!!
January 20th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Ditching the Privy Council and replacing it with the Supreme Court was meant to represent NZ being boldy independent from Great Britan. It is deeply ironic (or if you like, a bit of a “fuck you” to the previous government) that they got Prince William to open it.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
@Shunda barunda
Vote:I ain’t touching any vagina that looks like that!
January 20th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
It’s not even as though the lattice fits over the exterior – it is though it has been raised up and has half sticking above the eaves. It doesn’t really look like the concept drawings either. What a disappointment and embarrassment! Has anyone other than Rick said something nice about the exterior?
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Really good value for money! Yeah right. Beats the hell out of having the Privy Council as a substitute. Still it does pave the way for a Republic. Helen should be available to stand for President by then.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Much as we’d all love to trumpet another worldbeating Kiwi design effort, sadly we must face the fact that our new monument to the Clark government is only the second ugliest public building on the planet: http://johnansell.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/new-supreme-court-not-worlds-ugliest/
Locally it’s a worthy rival for Te Aro Park, the Beehive and Te Papa.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
They have a very nice shrubbery around the back. Well, when it grows a bit more.
The low profile is good for light.
And they might need to put guards around so no-one steals the iron lattice work – some idiots tried that with Auschwitz recently, so I do like the guard tower idea. Might be handy to stop anyone doing a runner if they are up on the three strikes count.
Remember folks, justice is blind. Or is the blindfold on for other reasons?
Disclaimer: I haven’t had a good look at the building yet. You’ve got me really curious now.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
“@Shunda barunda
I ain’t touching any vagina that looks like that!”
Then you better not break the law or you WILL be thrust into the inner chambers of justice!
All it needs now is some pubic lice.
Vote:Oh wait! if you look closely they’re already there!
January 20th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
GuyFawkes:
Camilla as Queen, or Helen as President?
This explains why we don’t get to make choices. Either way, they’ll be appointees. I thought the word democracy was in there somewhere, but obviously nowhere important.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
I heard Andy Thompson from Hokitika say on the radio today that he thought the new building was “a fabulous iconic structure that future generations would thank us for”.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
I heard “ironic”, not “iconic”
Maybe from Hokitika it looks really good?
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
Dull and ugly. If it’s meant to be an extension of the old building, just build it in the same style as the old. It’s a no-brainer really.
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
At least no new sets need be built when Peter Jackson directs “Shawshank Redemption 2015″
Vote:January 20th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
People should suspend their judgements until the scaffolding is removed.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 3:10 am
I concur it looks like what the outside of a prison should – complete with barbed wire.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 4:07 am
They should have always kept it as the High Court. That distinguished us from Australia at least. Oh well, let’s give Australia another bj Kiwis.
And we wonder why they mock us, successfully.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 5:46 am
I just showed this post to a number of Australians, most involved in the courts in one way or another.
Way to go Rick, we’re an international laughing stock. Someone who came in late even asked if it was a carpark.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 7:06 am
I can just see a pterodactyl swooping in from the skies and claiming this as it’s own.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 7:15 am
Maybe them Crooked Vultures will start nesting in the absurd mess?
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 7:29 am
When will they be taking the scaffolding down?
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 7:32 am
They should have just gone for plain and budget design. No point at all to wasting our money designing it when they will inevitably screw it up.
Vote:On these sorts of things fiscal responsibility seems to go out the window.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:47 am
I like it.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 8:10 am
Rick Barker is from Labour. Of course he approves of soviet-era style edifices that look like NKVD prison blocks.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 8:25 am
When I was buying our first home, my wife and I briefly considered a truly ugly house. The agent suggested that”from inside, you can’t see what it looks like outside”
Vote:I am willing to allow that the inside of this building may have some striking features, but from the outside, my thought is that it takes it’s inspiration from North Korea, and has even erected a barricade around it to reinforce that view. I agree it is truly hideous.
January 21st, 2010 at 9:08 am
Is there any truth to the rumour that the archittects have applied to the Court for name suppression?
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 9:10 am
Raybon Kan on TV said something like ‘it looks like a giant creature chewed up a prison and spat it out in the middle of Wellington’.
As an aside, am I the only one who likes the Beehive?
[DPF: The Beehive is the opposite to the Supreme Court. The exterior is iconic and striking. The interior is pretty horrible (but better ow than in the 90s)]
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 9:15 am
New Zealand seems to have this curse in designing, well, anything….
You only have to look at our many Olympic uniforms of the past (crocodile shoes anyone?), Air New Zealand uniforms, Sports uniforms and just about anything that requires any kind of taste. The Supreme Court building is just another in a long line (to be followed shortly by the party area on the Auckland Wharf).
Other countries seem capable of wonderful, beautiful, innovative design, while our designers produce bland, boring goddamn awful stuff. If New Zealand design was a color, it would be Taupe.
A pohutukawa is a beautiful, colorful tree that has nothing in common with this.
We don’t seem to have anyone in this country capable. Or maybe it comes from the same design mentality of those who think the new Telecom scribble is cool.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 9:15 am
Nigel – Yes, Yes you are.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 9:16 am
That’s probably one of the best pics of the supreme court building you are going to see – the reflection of the building across the road really enhances this photo – you should see how bad it looks without that reflection.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 9:18 am
No you’re not, I think it looks fine, and far better than the average downtown Wellington building.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 9:41 am
vibenna (133) Says:
January 20th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
This was the original brief: “People are always complaining about lacklustre government architecture, even saying that the Beehive is the worst building in Wellington. I want you to design something that will prove them wrong.”
Well folks, at last we have the last Government actually delivering on a promise. Now no-one can say that the Beehive is the worst building in Wellington. Way to go Ricky boy.
Next thing he will be saying that the weather in Northland is just soo great for being at the beach!
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 9:45 am
Isnt there another hideous facade on a new public Building . The National Library ??
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 9:49 am
Since when was nature so 2 dimensional? If that screen represents foliage then I suggest the architects have never left their concrete jungle. This idea is reinforced by the concrete posts. Could anything be blander than concrete columns? No detail, no foresight, no thinking. Concrete columns aren’t architectural in any way, they’re structural.
I think that the outside could be saved by making the “screens’ three dimensional, so perhaps they might represent how trees actually look and if the concrete columns are clad, probably with some bronze castings which might depict something interesting or related to the foliage concept.
Also, I can’t really see from that photo but are there gaps under those boring stone seats? I would’ve thought that’d be a security risk if there were but perhaps that’s why they’re solid, boring slabs of stone.
Actually, the best thing that could be done for the building is to set some rata vines growing through it, then it might have some nature look to it, or perhaps a crown of thorns look.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 10:00 am
So what did anyone expect?
It represents the creativity and passion of Margaret Wilson and Helen Clark. It is a concrete bunker with a security grid all over it to keep the proles at bay.
Quelle surprise.
Poor old Rick was just following orders.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 10:16 am
It kinda reminds me of the sarcophagus over the busted Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 10:22 am
It cost more than the new Auckland Airport hotel which will sleep 200, and this bunch of opulent idlers only sat for 22 days last year. I’ve also read the old woman who is chief justice wants another female appointed so that she will have someone to gossip to.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 10:24 am
At least we can understand why HRH came out to open it- every local was too embarrassed to be associated with it.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 10:26 am
The pillars may “add nothing” but they do fulfil an interesting minor role in holding up the first floor. Dumb engineers eh?
“I hope it doesn’t last 100 years. If we are lucky an earthquake will strike Wellington and destroy it. And the only architectural legacy it will leave behind is to teach design students what not to do in the future.”
Sorry but no. That building would probably be classified as one of the highest importance levels in the Structural design actions code, and designed to resist correspondingly higher earthquake forces than a lot of other buildings. It’s also structurally quite nice, being low-rise and a good square-ish plan shape. The supreme court will be one of the last things left standing after a major earthquake.
In partial defence of Rick Barker, it looked great in the Architect’s 3d drawings, he clearly imagined that the brass facade would almost glow when backlit by the lights of the offices inside… FAIL.
On the plus side, the look of it is consistent with numerous other 1960s and 70s Ministry of Works concrete horrors around the place….
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 10:39 am
The toilets in Kawakawa by Frederick Hundertwasser are more pleasing to look at than the courthouse and I’m sure more tourists will stop to look at the toilets. Then again, Hundertwasser wasn’t natively from NZ.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 11:13 am
Actually the beautiful irony is that for evermore there will be a plaque on a building designed by soulless republicans intent on repudiating our past, that the building was opened by our future monarch.
Fitting really. That nice Mr Key has an excellent sense of humour.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 11:18 am
Is that the best you can come up with RRM, “for a dull concrete bunker its a nice dull concrete bunker”. How the resident lefties attempt to praise the new box on the corner.
I vote we add a few marble pillars and a few endangered timbers to the front, gotta have a bit of showbiz in law. Although with our incestuous legal profession, perhaps racehorses rampant might be an appropriate crest/ With justice having a wee peek out from her blindfold to check whether she still owes the pleading QC any money?
NZ is too small to try and have an independent Supreme Court, we are already seeing the consequences.
Bring back the Privy Council! We need quality independent judging, not one where every practitioner is in each others pocket.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 11:36 am
My first thought was I hope they take the bamboo scaffholding off.
Still, it is an apt monument to Labour’s arrogance in abolishing the right of appeal to the greatest common law minds in the world and replacing it with some back yard version of an appeal court. Ridiculous.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 11:49 am
The dome roof of the new structure looks like a giant nipple.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 12:15 pm
nigel6888: “Is that the best you can come up with RRM, “for a dull concrete bunker its a nice dull concrete bunker”. How the resident lefties attempt to praise the new box on the corner.”
I am not praising it at all Nigel.
And precious little in the real world is left vs right. Get a life!
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 12:38 pm
labrator
Not so! Consider the Erechtheion on the Acropolis, they are both a structural & architecturally brilliant design. Other examples include the Parthenon on the same hill with many Corinthian, Doric, Ionic columned buildings from antiquity as well as more modern Neo-classical designs.
That said, it is dull as a microwave oven.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 12:47 pm
THESE concrete columns really really are structural! They support the entire weight of the first floor and the roof.
I’m not really qualified or competent to comment on the architecture. I don’t think it looks any good at all. (Though if the reality had matched the artist’s impression it would have been pretty cool.)
But in New Zealand in the 21st century we don’t need any more fake Greek temples.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 1:54 pm
This morning’s shit was more visually appealing than that fucking monstrosity. Even after a curry last night.
Architects in NZ all seem to have been trained by a combination of Tracy Emin, the bloke who threw shit at canvas and Stevie Wonder but the biggest travesty is some visually impaired fuckwit signed off the cheque for this thing. Without laughing in Warren and Mahoney’s collective face and saying “You are taking the piss, aren’t you?”
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 2:08 pm
What is it about Wellington which give architects cause to flock there and take the piss?
* The Beehive
Vote:* The Cake Tin.
* Te Papa
* The Supreme Court
January 21st, 2010 at 4:25 pm
The new international airport design can be added to the list as well.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 4:32 pm
le corbusier obviously did not die on August 27, 1965. His legacy lingers on. Bleeeech
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 5:26 pm
actually RRM it was designed by republican communists explicitly committed to separating NZ from the UK legal system. I feel entirely justified in pointing out that this is most definitely a product of a leftist mindset.
If anything else the raw concrete soviet style does tend to give it away, although the bars to keep the public out is a nice DDResque touch.
I appreciate that you personally don’t like it. Good on you.
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 5:57 pm
That’s my point dazzaman, plain concrete columns are purely structural. The ancient Greeks knew that you can make structural items attractive to look at, the architects here didn’t or couldn’t. Even Auckland made an attempt at beautifying their solid concrete motorway crash barriers!
Vote:January 21st, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Mmm, I did ignore “plain concrete”. No carved stone/marble there.
Both easy to construct AND ugly, simply no excuses at all for coming up with a pillbox topped with barbed wire.
Vote:January 22nd, 2010 at 9:59 pm
80 mill on a building
That’s probably comparable to the new US aircraft carrier George W Bush which cost hundreds of millions named after someone who nearly wrecked that countries economy.
THe timing of its launch was shameless as the nation was suffering so terribly.
Vote:March 4th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
the building is ooogly.
I couldn’t even find a rubbish bin in the entire building and had to go to the toilet to throw away my empty coke can!!!
Vote: