Whanganui Telephone Exchange

So we start our tour here, at arguably one of Whanganui’s most well known and historically intriguing Brutalist buildings. The Telephone exchange has a long history in Whanganui, dating back to 1886. To make a call, subscribers would ring and ask to be connected with the required phone number. At this early stage some 57 people, out of Whanagaui’s population of 5,289 were subscribed to this service. This new, large building was constructed between 1973-75. It was designed and built by the Ministry of Works, namely architects Gordon Miskimmin, Frank Anderson, A.C. van Raat . It began operation as a telephone exchange, taking over from the St Hills Street location in 1984.The building was equipped with the latest computerised equipment.  At this site, the ‘new’ style of exchange introduced direct-dialling for toll call subscribers, reminder services and call diversion. Quite literally a site of connection, the telephone exchange provided essential links for family, friends, business and was a tool of communication in times of emergency.

The Ministry of Works was responsible for a range of buildings in the post World War II era. A scarcity of building materials and imported goods meant any materials that were available were rationed for public projects. There was a lack of glass and steel being manufactured in Aotearoa - this resulted in greater reliance on materials such as concrete. When gazing upon this building, we see the implications of this first hand.

This building has been called ‘invasive’ and ‘imposing’, a rather typical reaction to the Brutalist style. As we have already somewhat mentioned, Brutalism is a vastly misunderstood architectural style. It is easy to make overt and stigmatised conclusions about the aesthetic quality of these buildings. There is a clear lack of colour which can make the building appear cold and uninviting. Concrete does however have ornate decorative potential, something the Telephone exchange utilises masterfully. Take the vertical concrete ribs for example. These ribs were manually broken with a sledgehammer. The architectural plans label this feature as having a “elephant house finish”. This was named after Hugh Carson’s work on the London Elephant and Rhinoceros Pavillion (1961). This finish was intended to prevent the concrete from causing damage or inflicting injury upon the animals when they rubbed up against the building. This practical manipulation of the concrete may not be so important in a building of this nature, we assume humans may be a bit more careful about where we stand, but it is interesting to note where our local architects were getting their Brutalist inspiration from. You will note this' ‘elephant house finish’’ at various other stops in the tour, Ella and Olive will point out two more overt uses of this feature.The decorative aspects of the building are simply amplified as we gaze up at the series of concrete panels spread across the middle of the building. It creates a depth and gives the building an almost modernist look. Note the recent addition of the cream paint - an attempt to add aesthetic value that seems somewhat redundant and to me has the opposite effect. This building is a great example of the relationship between concrete, aesthetic quality and brutalism.

City College

The City College building at 84 Ingestre Street has a history that dates back to 1911 when it was opened as Whanganui Technical College. The school had 142 students and the college came about due to a need for art, technical and industrial skills leading to the opening of the technical school, known as the School of art, was one of the first four in the country.

By 1957 due to increased popularity of the school, the roll was closed off to girls. In 1962 the last girls in the school had graduated and in 1964 the school was renamed Whanganui Boys College.  

In the seventies the Assembly hall was completed and the Brutalist styled tower block was finished in the very end of that decade in 1979.

Today the Brutalist style still stands in the now Co-Ed school.

The College closely resembles Wellington Girls College as this brutalist style was one commonly used for school buildings. Many say that the Brutalist style of buildings highlights the institutionalism of schools and therefore Brutalism is often a good fit.

First Church of Christ, Scientist Sunday School Hall

This is the site of Whanganui’s only Christian Science Church. According to Christian Science NZ’s website - Christian Science is “a Christian denomination and a world-wide movement. It is defined by its discoverer and founder, Mary Baker Eddy, as “the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony.” Whanganui’s First Church of Christ Sunday School  was completed in 1943. Over the last 79 years, the Sunday School has been open for young people under 20 to attend while their families are at the 10:30am service. The church itself has been at this site since 1929 when it converted an Edwardian dentist clinic which remains the main church to this day, though it is heavily altered. From the street, it is not apparent that the main church dates from 1903.

Stylistically, it would be a stretch to call the hall a Brutalist building. Its use of materials and features arguably anticipates Brutalism, however. It is a reinforced concrete building with a super six asbestos roof and a beautiful courtyard garden. The stark rawness of the concrete has been covered white paint. Could this be an attempt to add greater 'aesthetic value’? Note the contrast of the unpainted concrete wall - a significant, intriguing and inherently brutalist feature. There are hints of eco-Brutalism, a concept which plays on a sense of juxtaposition between ‘divergent concepts’. In this case it is the contrast of the imposing building and the nature that surrounds it. While not eco-Brutalist in the traditional sense it is still an interesting observation.

The First Church of Christ has 13 different locations across Aotearoa including but not limited to: Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington. The quirky Wellington church designed by renowned architect Ian Athfield may be familiar to some. It has recently been announced that the church is to be demolished. It is not protected by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga or any other heritage organisations. It is postmodernist and is largely concrete and ceramic. There are similar style discussions to be had surrounding this building and the modernist and Brutalist styles we see in Whanganui. This leads to broader discussions surrounding the loss of heritage and effects or urbanisation of unprotected heritage buildings that are of great significance. In the context of Whanganui, the Art Deco, Victorian and Modernist architecture seems to harvest greater appreciation. I want you to think about how you determine value. Why is one style more ‘valuable’ than another? Just some food for thought!

Smith and Smith Bulk Store

Smith and Smith Bulk store sits at 59 Ingestre Street and is now a womens-only gym. Built in 1959, the building was designed by Don Wilson with Eddie Belchambers.The building is an example of simple and functional Brutalism with its basic solid shape. The side panels show a cool geometric pattern which has been highlighted through paintwork.

Smith and Smith Limited were oil, colour and Hardware merchants who had branches in Wellington, Lower Hutt, Petone, Naper, Hastings, Palmerston North, and Whanganui.

Trinity Methodist Church

The intersection between Brutalism and religion makes for a very interesting discussion. The Trinity Methodist Church, located on Wicksteed Street masterfully explores this juxtaposition.

Methodism has historically had strong ties with charity work and social responsibility. Methodist mission stations were established in Whanganui in the 1840s and 50s, and Trinity Church at this site dates to the 1860s, where the earlier church stood for over a century. Wesley Methodist Church and St Alban’s Church closed in the 2000s leaving this the primary Methodist church in Whanganui. The church is associated with the City Mission and hosts the Budgetary Advisory Service in offices at the rear of the complex.

Built in 1963, this church is a fairly early example of the Brutalist style. Typically, churches are highly ornate. Traditional, historicist architectural styles adopted by churches include: Gothic, Baroque and Romanesque. A Brutalist church thus has the potential to be very striking. This church is ornate - just in a way that is unexpected. Architects James Walker and Llyod Love have used concrete to create stylistically and religiously charged patterns. As previously suggested, there was a scarcity of available materials at the time. As a Brutalist ‘building’, this church stands out. The use of geometry works in harmony with the excessive use of the rich and raw material concrete.

Every church tells a story. Brutalist churches tell us that sanctity can be created without excessive ornamentation. The church features a combination of materials such as the previously mentioned concrete, bricks and steel. The roof above the geometric pattern is angular. It creates depth and dimension, something relatively difficult to achieve with a material like concrete. The spire that holds the cross is particularly interesting. A very industrial take on a traditional church feature. It is a rather strange yet eye-catching symbol. It is hard to ignore the modernist influence. The Trinity Methodist Church is an extremely interesting building. There has been no paint added to the exterior of the building which is in itself rather significant. Its grand scale and rough surfaces create a feeling of sanctity in an unexpected and exciting way. I think it is a reminder that although Brutalism is not conventionally ‘appealing’, it has the potential to encourage us to readdress our bias and to look beyond the material.

RSA Little Theatre

The RSA Little Theatre sits at 159 Wicksteed Street and has a long and interesting history.

The theatre was set up by returned servicemen and their wives upon their return from World War Two. Before television and film reshaped entertainment, theatre was a highly popular pastime. British soldiers of the 65th Regiment stationed in Whanganui during the New Zealand Wars set up a theatre of an all-male cast in 1857. A century later, soldiers and ex-soldiers still had an interest in theatrical performance. In 1958 the theatre group purchased an old house on Wicksteed Street under the auspices of the RSA to convert it into a theatre. Whanganui had a thriving theatre scene already, with facilities including the Repertory and the Amdram serving slightly different audience markets.

The group worked with architect LS Barsanti to remodel the house into a theatre over the next three years and the theatre was officially opened in 1956. Additions to the building were added in 1962 and the theatre was very successful with four major productions, 12 one act plays and two British Drama League festival plays being reported in 1965. The membership for the theatre boasted 258 people acting or working behind the scenes.

In June 1966, a fire caused major damage to the theatre. Fundraising began to rebuild the theatre on the same site and the new building designed by LS Barsanti was opened two years later in 1968. This new building was brutalist style- made of concrete. The brutalist style lent itself well as a fire safe building being concrete based, and so using the brutalist style made sense for this re-build.

Unfortunately, changing technology – the popularity of television – meant that visitor numbers to the theatre dropped and the theatre officially closed in 1980.

St Mary’s Catholic Church

This is the third St Mary’s Church in Whanganui, the first opening in 1857 and the second opening in 1877. Both were sited on Victoria Avenue near Majestic Square. After the second St Mary’s, designed by Thomas Turnbull, closed in 1973, this striking new church was built on another site, opening in 1977 and containing many pieces reused from the 1877 St Mary’s, including the stained glass windows, font, organ, parts of the altar rails, vessels, and statues. The architect was the late Ron Lamont, who wrote "I have designed scores of buildings, but none has given me as much joy and satisfaction as St Mary's." Lamont designed multiple buildings in Whanganui, including the District Library in Queens Park. He also later had involvement in designing the Officers Barracks and Mess Hall (1984) in Waiouru, which recently received an Enduring Architecture Prize at the 2021 Western Architecture Awards.

This building is more modernist than it is Brutalist — however, it is important to remember that Brutalism is generally considered to be a variant or subtype of post-war modernism. It is far less ‘blocky’ and monolithic than buildings of the typical Brutalist style, and its origami-like roof and large windows are also a breakaway from Brutalism; but it also boasts several features that show Brutalist influence, such as its geometric form, monochromatic appearance, and use of raw unpainted concrete.

As with the Trinity Church, a Brutalist architectural approach is an interesting one to take for this building considering the ornamentation typical of most churches, which tend to favour more decorative styles such as Gothic. Yet despite its relatively pared-back, stark design, St Mary’s is still an arresting building that doesn’t fail to draw the eye.

Departmental Building

The old Whanganui Departmental building is arguably a more extreme example of the architectural style. Opened in 1979, the building was designed by Tony Baker and Graydon Miskimmin for the Ministry of Works. The building reflects the monolithic and top down Central Government architecture, popularised after the Second World War, that is a hallmark of Muldoonism, comparable to both the Beehive and the National Library in Wellington. The building embodies a fundamental core of brutalist architecture, function over form and an emphasis on vernacular architecture. Here, we see the building's earthquake resistant exoskeleton on display on the exterior, rejecting the more modernist idea of hiding function within aesthetics. The criss-cross detail featured on every window, while indeed functional, is often written off as prison-like. But this dismisses the uniquely brutalist decorative detail, with the repetition of these shapes and lines reflecting the often unconsidered poetry of working within concrete.

Standing at 7 storeys high, this building is large.The building segments itself, each floor stacked upon another almost like building blocks, reinforced by the criss-cross details. However, this helps minimise the building's size, forming a triangular shape and lessens the impact on the city’s skyline and occupies very little real estate the higher up it goes. While we usually consider brutalist buildings, as large, densely constructed and overpowering, the Departmental Building subverts this brutalist stereotype within its own carefully considered construction and attempts to minimise its intrusion on the landscape. In a bid to soften it’s rather harsh exterior and lessen the utilitarian elements of this building, it has since been adapted to reflect a more eco-brutalist style with the planting of vegetation, juxtaposing the concrete with softer green trees and shrubbery.

Whanganui Regional Museum back extension

This back extension to Robert Talboys’ 1920s Free Classical style museum building was done in 1968, designed by architects Don Wilson, Eddie Belchambers and Roger Low. While this project had multiple aspects, including adding the Davis Lecture Theatre and a classroom, the main focus of this extension was to house Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi, or the Māori Court, which was designed inside as a wharepuni (meeting house).

The exterior of this extension could be said to toe the line between Brutalism and more general modernism, taking elements from both. The heavy looking exposed concrete panels are in line with Brutalism, as is the use of unusual shapes — often used in Brutalism to differentiate parts of the building for an eye-catching dramatic effect — such as the convex outcropping wall on the Watt St side. This outcropping and the sections of wall not covered by the concrete panels are painted a cream colour, which is often used for modernist building facades, with the addition of red brick also adding more colour to prevent the concrete monochrome criticised by many. Brutalist buildings often make use of interesting textural elements as a form of ‘ornamentation’, as we see on this building with the simple textural pattern of the curved facade, which brings to mind harakeke (flax weaving). This also reflects the building’s function as a house for taonga Māori, as does the wheku (carved face) ornamenting the facade.

Through following architect Louis Sullivan’s ‘form follows function’ principle and designing from the inside outwards, the interior of this extension connects smoothly to the rest of the building interior; however, the exterior is less seamless. While the cream colour of parts of the extension match the original 1920s Museum building, the two parts don’t mesh together particularly well, with the Brutalist/modernist look of the extension clashing with the Free Classical style of the old building.

Moutoa Chambers/Quartz Gallery/Munford House

Originally built in 1964, this building has been inhabited by many different groups and businesses. Whilst it was an engineering firm in the 1970’s, a second storey was added as the firm continued to work below and finished in 1978. The addition of this is seamless and blends in naturally to the bottom floor. Similar to other buildings on this tour, this building relies on a heavy use of concrete and structural elements are readily evident and not disguised- such as the pillars holding up the extension and the bracing details on the second story windows. Although smaller than the Departmental building, the two share a brutalist synergy.

The structure continues the idea of repetitive lines, with interesting textural elements included in the large concrete sections, to add dimension to what could have been a very flat design. We see here the addition of wooden slatting and metal bars on the second floor, likely representing a slightly more generous supply chain. While attempting to reflect the engineering firm, the building leans back toward brutalist utilitarian style, with a bulky and square structure, and the addition of softer materials, such as the slatting and green paint bringer earthier tones into the harsher concrete palette. Most lines on this building guide your eye around horizontally, instead of vertically, perhaps as an attempt at an optical illusion to lessen the visual impact of the bulky structure.

The building is now home to the country’s largest collection of studio ceramics and Aotearoa’s only museum dedicated to the craft. Despite the heavy handedness of the building’s exterior, the second story’s addition of large, wrap-around windows make the interior light and airy, originally intended to provide natural light for architectural drawing. The building received an Aotearoa New Zealand Institute of Architects design award.

Wanganui Veterinary Club / Plunket Clinic

Designed by the late Stephen Palmer. Palmer was a long-serving Whanganui District Councillor and also designed a number of buildings from the 70s onwards – mainly domestic. One of the most prominent designs is the Putiki Kohanga Reo, which echoes elements of the Putiki Memorial Church. The Veterinary Club consists of precast concrete panels, and therefore shares some elements with brutalism and modernism. However it is much more domestic in scale and blends into the landscape compared to its brutalist neighbours on either side.

Computer Centre / Wairere House

Wairere House, more commonly known as the Whanganui Computer Centre, was purpose-built to house the National Law Enforcement Database, or the “Whanganui Computer”. This system was New Zealand’s first centralised electronic database, allowing various Government agencies, particularly the New Zealand Police and the Transport and Justice Ministries, to record, group, and share information about New Zealanders — from vehicle registrations and drivers’ licences to traffic violations and criminal convictions. It was described by Alan McCready, the Minister of Police of the time, as “probably the most significant crime-fighting weapon ever brought to bear against lawlessness in this country”.

The Centre began operating in 1976. Because of its purpose, the building was designed for security — it is almost windowless, with thick walls to withstand any attempted security breaches. It’s a good example of the “form follows function” principle — its function as a vault for the Whanganui Computer is what really dictated its form. It’s got the extremely monolithic, block-like appearance typical of the Brutalist style — one local architect said to us that “it’s about as Brutalist as you can get''. This fortified appearance combined with its location right by the river apparently led some Whanganui residents to nickname it the Kremlin.

This building, or more importantly its contents, was a subject of concern for a lot of New Zealanders — many felt like it was a new level of government surveillance and a breach of people’s right to privacy. Comparisons were made to the ‘Big Brother’ of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. This concern was actually translated into action on the 18th of November 1982, in an event that this building is probably best known for, when “punk anarchist” Neil Roberts attempted to destroy the Computer with a homemade bomb. The bomb did work — the explosion was apparently heard and felt for miles — but only Roberts himself was killed, and there was no critical damage caused to the building or the Computer.

Before the explosion, Roberts wrote a suicide note on a piece of cardboard that included the words: "Here’s one anarchist down. Hopefully there’s a lot more waking up. One day we’ll win - one day”. He also spray painted a slogan on the public toilet across the road that said: “we have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity”. One of Roberts’ friends, Kathy Ramsay, said that Roberts “hated the idea of people becoming a number in a government file” and, like quite a few others, saw the Computer as a “scary development” for New Zealand.

Despite this event and protests against the Computer, the Centre was operational until 1995, by which time most government agencies had ‘in-house’ systems that made the Computer unnecessary. The building is still in use, though — it’s been used by the National Library to store some of its collection, and the top floor, which was added in 1990, houses law firm Treadwell Gordon.

Content coming soon! Photos and research posted after final tour on Thursday 3.30. Thanks for coming!