Rob spoke of critical drivers in honouring heritage and taonga.

• Facing the challenge and distilling complexity

• Understanding the wide landscape of stakeholders’ interests

• Focusing on what matters and accepting there will be compromises 

• Managing the politics

Japan

Freshly back from a trip to Japan, Rob spoke of the intensity of that experience. In particular he spoke about the exceptionally high value placed upon heritage, history and treasures.  Illustrating his talk with images, the audience travelled from Mt Fuji (seen through a Shinto Shrine Gate at Fujiyoshida, the dramatic Yama-dera Temple northeast of Yamagata City, the extraordinary Todai-ji “Great Eastern Temple” in Nara, the over 700-year-old Hi-me-ji castle (rebuilt and expanded in the 1600s). Rob spoke of visiting the last and walking through the many levels of the building without shoes, to finish with socks that were still clean.

Finishing the account of his itinerary, Rob cited the extraordinary Kin-ka-ku-ji temple in Kyoto - the Golden Pavilion with its gleaming gold leaf exterior. His observation was that you can well understand why shogun Ashi-kaga Yoshi-mitsu used this temple as his retirement villa before it became a Zen temple some 600 years ago. Rob quipped that a visit to this temple is guaranteed to put you in a very Zen state of mind.

Less Zen - Wellington Inner City Bypass Project.

Less Zen, but perhaps imbued with no fewer lessons, Rob switched to an account of Wellington’s inner city bypass project. Transit NZ had plans for a trench motorway extension across the city and a designation was put in place in the 1970s. However, this plan was shelved as were the many options that followed.

In 1994 Transit announced the plan for a westward one-way ground level road. Design work got underway the following year, taking some 10 years to complete (2006).

Rob was the appointed architect for the project and worked alongside lan Bowman.

The route carved its way through the significant heritage area and community of Te Aro.

"Bypass My Ass" became a catchphrase in the early 2000s of a residents’ group out to stop the bypass. Their main concern was a loss of heritage and an impact upon the Bohemian community living there, the anodyne airbrush of gentrification.

A total of 23 heritage buildings were affected by the new road. Of these, 19 were relocated and restored. The balance remained in place.

When Rob joined the project there was a plan to move only 5-6 buildings. The assumption being the majority of buildings were too dilapidated and/or impractical to move and so would be demolished.

The project leadership managed to convince NZTA that all 23 heritage buildings could and should be saved. This also went a long way to address key concerns raised by Judge Shonagh Kenderdine in the environment court.

Inevitably there were budget implications for the retention of this heritage; money had to be found. 

There were two main groupings of heritage buildings that were impacted. These were in upper Cuba Street and west Willis Street between Abel Smith and Buller Streets.

Amongst the strategies was the saving of 276 Cuba street by realigning the planned road. Some buildings were relocated such as the pair 289/291 which were moved across the road.  In the fierce conversations that played out at the Environment Court it was suggested that some of the losses were demolition by neglect.

Rob unpicked the history of Tonks cottages and the Tonks house off Wellington’s Cuba Street. While the former were restored, the latter was moved to metres northwest and rotated 180 degrees before being restored. The question posed was the value of the compromise. It was noted that this is a significant dissociation with the Tonks’ history and family history. 

A cluster of three buildings were moved  30 metres north of the north corner of Abel Smith Street – a matter of creating space for on-ramps. There was a knock on – three other heritage buildings on Willis Street were moved to the north-west which Rob suggested resulted in a disconnection from Willis Street and he speculated that there was an unsatisfactory urban design outcome.

Curtains Up – St James

The St James, originally 'His Majesty's Theatre' or 'Fullers', was built in 1912 for the theatre company Messrs John Fuller and Sons - a successful vaudeville and variety theatre company. The St James Theatre building is a listed Historic Place Category 1 building. Designed by Henry Eli White in the Edwardian style, it was bought by the Chase Corporation in the 1980s who wanted to demolish it - but saved by public objections leading to its purchase by Wellington City Council in 1993.

The speaker, Rob Stevens, was the appointed architect for the project and again worked alongside lan Bowman. The resulting redevelopment and refurbishment took in the neighbouring building and also provided a home for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

The concept to take in the adjacent building was driven around function and retention of heritage. The original theatre had no foyer space. An earlier idea by Dunning Thornton engineers was to cut the theatre at the back of the auditorium and move this further back on the site to allow an infill of foyer space. This would have had a major impact on the heritage and functionally would fail to provide sufficient “crush” accommodation. The solution sought was  another way to provide foyer space resulting in utilising the adjacent building. They had to resolve how to load the auditorium from one side.

It has however compromised re-activation of the theatre building at street level - the large entry doors that used to open up to the street when a show was on now remain permanently shut. Rob quizzically asked his audience to speculate a way in which that elevation might become active again.  

The auditorium was fully restored with minimal and largely concealed intervention, such as –

• Proscenium arch widened

• Stalls raked and ventilation plenum under the seating added

• Orchestra Pit added

• Motorised hatch cut into the ceiling for stage lighting

• Removal of some posts holding up the grand circle to remove views obstructions? in the circle

• Stage House was completely rebuilt

Subsequently, St James has been refurbished and restrengthened in 2019-2022 at a cost of $42 million

A declaration, a treaty, a petition

Rob ruminated on a driving question - how to exhibit and offer access to Aotearoa New Zealand’s most important constitutional documents, held by Archives NZ?

This was the challenge of the He Tohu project handed to Rob as client-side architect and project director. The project (2014 to 2017) had a number of prior failed attempts with fallout, and it had become quite politically charged. Having worked on the 2012 refurbishment of the National Library, Rob was confident the newly reconfigured team could succeed.

A key decision was to treat this exhibition in a non-standard way. Pivotally, they sought to  separate the taonga (sacred or tapu documents) from the interpretive display (noa or ordinary). The concept quite quickly evolved into a beautiful (if not exquisite) document room and surrounding interpretive and learning space.

The documents selected required highly specialised display cases which was narrowed to one supplier in Germany (Glasbau Hahn). To understand the requirements and technology of these cases is to understand that heritage is often intensely cherished – there is a mixture of environment, security, accessibility and aesthetic excitement that had to be finessed with considerable skill.

The resulting document room offers the best possible environment for a viewing experience of the documents but offers no interrogative information. The engineering of controls around preservation and protection from harm are present, multilayered but unseen.

The document room has a design life of 25 years. Included are – 

• 1835 He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni - Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand

• 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi - Treaty of Waitangi

• 1893 Women's Suffrage Petition - Te Petihana Whakamana Poti Wahine

Preserved yet accessible, these powerful taonga for future generations.

The interpretive space was more challenging in the sense of the extensive stakeholder consultation required to agree what to say about these foundational documents.

It was envisaged that this space could be, and should be, updated at intervals as the country grows in understanding and iwi settlements are worked through.

The interpretive exhibition has currently been removed, and an updated exhibition is due to opened in June.

On the record – Archives NZ Wellington Building

Built in 1960s for Government Print, the Mulgrave Street building – a little short of the bus interchange, was converted in 1990 as a home for Archives NZ. Now at the end of its functional life, the building is  seismically challenged and generally not fit for purpose.

In 2019 and 2020 the Government funded the Preserving the Nation's Memory programme to replace this building and find solutions for the forecast growth of both Archives and National Library.

Rob was appointed Programme Director for the Department of Internal Affairs.  He outlined the enormity and complexity of this project in nominating the 10 Agents of Deterioration

1. Physical force (including from earthquakes) 

2. Light

3. Incorrect temperature

4. Incorrect humidity

5. Pests

6. Water

7. Fire

8. Custodial neglect

9. Pollutants

10. Security from theft or vandals

If that isn’t a slow sweat to get through, Rob then spoke of the media with conflicting needs, each requiring different environments for preservation:

• Paper

• Paintings

• Audio Visual

• Music formats

The new Wellington Archival building is across the road from the old Government Print edifice is near completion. There are10 levels, half of which is repository space - hence the solid façade. It is one of the most earthquake resilient buildings in NZ.  Base isolated with bearing displacements capacity of up to 1.6m, the mass of the building is equivalent to a 30-story building. 

The design was undertaken in a co-design approach with architects Warren & Mahoney and mana whenua designer Tihei. The design of the building manifests the cultural narrative of this historically significant Pipitea whenua. The approach has generated a very satisfying outcome but not without complex politics and difficult value judgements.  

The driver for the selection of this particular site was to enable a physical link to the National Library building to enable closer collaboration and efficiency of technical and public services of three institutions; Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga - Archives New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa - the National Library of New Zealand and Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision – the Film Archive.

The ambition was to create  a documentary and recorded "heritage campus". This was playing out, in the moment of Rob’s address, in organisational changes to the institutions in a challenging time for the public service. The opportunity came about as a result of the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake leading to the demolition of Defence House. Defence House was initially known as Freyberg House, which has a neighbour confusingly named the Freyberg Building.  Freyberg House bore the name for the memorial bust of Lord Freyberg which once stood there, and which has mysteriously vanished (perhaps an example of lost heritage). 

There were long and challenging negotiations with the commercial landowner for this development.  There were long and challenging internal conversations – both exciting and taxing. The building is a testimony to a great many voices – diverse yet inclusive.