Opera House

Keeping the opera house is “a no-brainer”, says internationally acclaimed urban designer James Lunday.

He was in Hastings on Wednesday to meet with the Independent Working Group (IWP) which has the job of coming up with options and concepts for the Hawke’s Bay Opera House, Municipal Buildings and Civic Square. It had been “road-testing” some of its ideas with a range of people with particular expertise, including Mr Lunday. That feedback would be factored into its preferred options before it presented its work to council in four weeks’ time. At that point its ideas would become public.

Mr Lunday took a tour inside the opera house.

Being able to see the inside it had reinforced his belief that it should be kept. The most successful international revitialisation projects had kept their historic buildings, giving city centres character, context “and architectural ambience”, he told the IWP.

“[The opera house] is a fantastic performance space. The way it is designed means you can have a really intimate audience experience. A new building will not achieve that – please don’t throw it away.”

Some of the major projects he had been involved in – in Glasgow in Scotland, Hastings in England and Bendigo in Australia, had been successful precisely because they had retained their heritage buildings, he said.

He is heavily involved in the Christchurch rebuild, and says one of the most difficult things about that project was that in the earthquake and ensuing demolitions, such a lot of the heritage was lost.

“It’s impossible to replace it. Your opera house is unique and both buildings should be saved. Demolishing them would be a disaster.”

On the development of plans for Civic Square, Mr Lunday urged the IWP to “be bold”. He said buildings in the square needed to have “multiple faces” onto the surrounding streets, to encourage people to use them.

How the buildings in a city work together to draw people into the central area should be the major consideration, Mr Lunday said.

Draft plans for Civic Square were drawn up a year ago but have been revisited since the discovery that the opera house and Municipal Buildings needed earthquake strengthening. The IWP has been tasked with linking the three areas together to create a cultural heart for Hastings.

“The work on Civic Square is an evolution of the original draft plans, rather than starting with a blank page,” said IWP chairman Richard Kirby.

Mr Lunday was last in Hastings in August to address the mayoral symposium on revitalising the city. At that time he told his audience that Hastings’ had numerous advantages, including its heritage architecture, its healthy liveable environment with its fresh air, blue skies and sun which gave it the “California feel”, its infrastructure, including libraries, clubs, sports facilities, walking and cycling tracks, and its links to the rest of the world through the port, the airport and high speed internet.

He reiterated this week that Hastings “is a gem; architecturally – you’ve got art deco, Spanish mission, some lovely 40s buildings; and it’s walkable, easy to get about, and it feels safe. I really don’t see a lot wrong with it. What you really need is more people – and what you do with the city centre will make all the difference to that.”

He urged people to be patient. “Don’t risk the long term success for the sake of a couple of months. Once you’ve made the right decisions you can claw that time back during the project process.”

For more on James Lunday see: tedxchristchurch.com/speakers/103-james-lunday (strong language warning)

Released by Richard Kirby, chairman, Independent Working Group (IWP)

ENDS

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