Some terrible obliteration

The Royal International Hotel, which once stood on the corner of Victoria and Albert Streets, Auckland. Photo / NZ Herald.

I was in Poland a few years back, visiting a small city called Wraclow. To me, its centre looked ancient. Imagine my surprise, and then fascination, when I found I was looking at a reconstituted past.

To explain: in the 1930s, the Polish city became a German city called Breslau. As the Nazi empire collapsed, Breslau became a desperate kind of stockade. It was inevitable that the Soviet forces would submerge it in a tidal wave of soldiers, tanks and ammunition. Revenge was now the order of the hour. Tanks were brought into its elegant town square, aimed at the ancient buildings and piece by piece they were reduced to rubble.

Desecration is a way of cultural obliteration. After World War II, Wraclow, like so many cityscapes destroyed by bombing, faced a very basic question. They would rebuild - but what would they rebuild?

This question now faces Christchurch, one of the few cities in New Zealand to keep a large proportion of its Victorian and Edwardian architecture. Till now. After the horrible events of early last month, the people of Christchurch - and in fact New Zealand - face this larger question.

To rebuild is a given. But what will be rebuilt?

In the years after 1945, Europeans often reconstituted their shattered history by replacing buildings in the exact same form they had before the disaster. This always intrigued me, as it implies the plans for these buildings somehow escaped the apocalypse of war. In this way Russian palaces which had been reduced to rubble were rebuilt.

And in the case of a small Polish city, buildings magically reappeared so the citizens of the city were comforted by a return to an architecture they knew and felt affection for.

New Zealanders have a different approach to the past - or feeling comfortable with the past. Newness is often celebrated as a sign of prosperity, of the community "moving forward".

When the inner city of Napier was destroyed pretty much completely in the 1931 earthquake and subsequent fire, a decision was made to remake Napier as an entirely new city.

This had a rationale. Most of the buildings in Napier pre-quake were built with little knowledge of earthquake resistance. The trauma of Hawkes Bay - 258 people died in the earthquake and fire - meant people wanted buildings which were extremely strong.

The new city of Napier was consciously modern. It lacked high parapets (which were so disastrous in Christchurch), it was stripped back to a very bare style. And the fact it was made of reinforced concrete dictated a decorative style by the sheer need to make what was seen as an inferior, brutal material humanly acceptable.

The designers of Napier had the example of Santa Barbara in California which was rebuilt after a disastrous earthquake in 1925. This had a uniform Hispanic look, reinforced concrete doubling for plaster.

But the devastation in Napier was so complete that the city offered a tabula rasa. It gave to the destroyed and demoralised city - in the depths of a depression - the opportunity to recreate itself as an optimistic, forward-looking and uniformly designed environment.

Christchurch is entirely different. The destruction is only in pockets. It has taken down some historic buildings as well as a surprising number of more contemporary buildings.

My question is: how will these Victorian and Edwardian buildings be rebuilt? Will they be replaced by replica buildings which acknowledge the fondness and familiarity that people had for the originals? This would entrench Christchurch's rich colonial architectural legacy.

But it has an inherent problem.

Replication is so unshowy, so static, it implies our society is not relentlessly moving forward.

Cynical architects and others, jobbing for work, will call for entirely new buildings which will evoke New Zealanders' determination to get over disaster. These shiny new buildings, they will argue, will act as bandages over a wounded pysche. People can forget.

My argument is that there are probably some keystone buildings in Christchurch which do need to be reproduced. The old Manchester Buildings in Cathedral Square come to mind. Past detractors always said this kind of building was bog standard British empire, nothing original.

My point is its specialness comes from its role in the streetscape. An seasoned veteran of a building becomes a special marker in the mind of the city dweller. It becomes a kind of friend. (I also mourn the small, unshowy old buildings which are also at risk as being "nothing special".)

Already on the news there is a kind of gung-ho spirit of quick demolition. There is a sense of things spinning out of control, of buildings being demolished as quickly as possible.

Of course there are valid safety reasons to ensure buildings don't collapse. But once the building is gone forever, what then? Any Aucklander can look at the hollow heart of the city - the demolished site of the old International Hotel at the corner of Victoria and Albert Sts - and see what is on offer. The hole in the fabric of the city has a reproachful look, peopled Some terrible obliteration

The Polish city of Wraclow replicated itself after WWII destruction. Picture / Peter Wells

by cars and what was the very sign of its fairground melancholy: a bungy jump machine.

Empty sites have a way of lingering. Quick demolition may be regretted in the fullness of time. A society is made up of a sense of shared community, of keystone points which anchor a place down, much as a picnic tablecloth in a strong wind is anchored down by heavy river pebbles. Take the pebbles away and the fabric of memory flits away.

I would argue quite strongly that Christchurch should rebuild some of its keystone buildings and even look at reconstituting single buildings in what are long runs of uniform Victorian/Edwardian blocks. This allows plenty of scope for new architecture in the many other buildings which were destroyed.

There is room, even a need, for new and inventive solutions to what is an urban, but also a human, predicament. How do you restore confidence - but how do you also restore memory? Every older Aucklander of a certain age has had that disturbing feeling, when visiting the inner city, of looking at a new building and thinking: What was there before? I know there was something there. I even remember liking whatever it was. But now ... I can't recall. It is as if some terrible obliteration has occurred.

The sad thing for Aucklanders is that it wasn't carpet bombing which destroyed the inner city as in Europe. It was an economic system with not enough caution or reserves to protect the fabric of a community.

My fear is with Christchurch this same obliteration may happen. In this case a quake has raised the question. We as a society have to provide a thoughtful, mature answer.

- Peter Wells is a Hawkes Bay-based writer and film-maker. The documentary The Mighty Civic, made by Wells and Stewart Main, helped to galvanise the public campaign to save the Civic Theatre.