Many of you will know that most of the Karori Teach­ers’ Col­lege cam­pus, designed by the late Bill Toomath, is threatened with demoli­tion by its new own­ers, Ryman Health­care. I don’t know enough about the pre­vi­ous VUW/WCC own­er­ship shenanigans to com­ment on that side, and the prac­tic­al­ity of main­tain­ing its role as a com­munity asset are best left to that com­munity, but I will mourn the loss of a fine and sig­ni­fic­ant part of Wel­ling­ton’s archi­tec­tur­al her­it­age. While it’s still here, I decided to make a sort of “ambi­ent doc­u­ment­ary” record­ing its won­der­ful inter­play of form, tex­ture, land­scape and light.

I know that not every­one appre­ci­ates Bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture, and in some con­texts it can indeed be as grim as its pop­u­lar repu­ta­tion sug­gests. How­ever, the way that Toomath integ­rates build­ing and land­scape is some­times sub­lime, and the jux­ta­pos­i­tion of boldly tex­tured con­crete and dense green­ery is sur­pris­ingly nat­ur­al: the U‑shaped stair­wells emerge from the under­growth like lime­stone boulders or the rem­nants of ancient temples. In con­trast, the upper court­yard is light-filled and gently scaled, com­bin­ing ele­ments of medi­aev­al cloisters with Japan­ese influ­ences and rig­or­ous plan­ning to pro­duce a refresh­ingly humane strand of Mod­ern­ism. Not just con­crete, but glass and wood, are deployed as a sur­pris­ingly broad tex­tur­al palette, almost sen­su­al in places, with a Guy Ngan sculp­ture as a fit­ting centrepiece.

You can find more about its his­tory and her­it­age on the Archi­tec­tur­al Centre’s web­site and in this art­icle by Ben Schrader.