Wellington Town Hall redevelopment, Digi Mart USA News (Wellington, New Zealand): After 13 years boarded up and hundreds of millions of dollars in a budget blowout, the Wellington Town Hall upgrade has entered its final phase. RNZ got a look inside the building on Tuesday, a redevelopment that advocates hope will leave the building’s controversial legacy in the past and become a game changer for cultural life in the city.
The building was sitting on its original unreinforced concrete piles on reclaimed coastal land when it was deemed earthquake prone in 2013. The original budget for the project of about $43 million blew out several times at Wellington City Council to nearly $330 million.
The council said it was still doing final accounting, but programme manager for Te Ngākau Farzad Zamani said the final phase was looking as though it would come in $20 million under the latest budget. He said the construction was extremely challenging.
“It’s probably been one of the most complex strengthening projects in the history of New Zealand. So we had to lift the building up, base isolate the building, which basically separated the building over-ground to the ground.”
A stream was running underneath the building, and ground conditions were “terrible,” Zamani said. Construction had to be balanced with keeping the Town Hall’s top-quality acoustics and retaining its heritage fabric.
A modern entrance greets people as they walk through the doors, including light installations draping from the ceiling that incorporate mana whenua and coastal design. The 121-year-old Adam Auditorium, with its famed acoustics and original 1906 organ, has been restored.
Strengthening and restoration was designed by Athfield Architects and Archifact.
The town hall will also become home to the National Music Centre, a collaboration between Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Music and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO). Head of the music school, Professor Kim Cunio, said students will be able to practise and perform in the town hall with professional musicians in new teaching and performance spaces.
Cunio said Wellingtonians were right to scrutinise the “huge” cost of the project, adding that economic modelling showed a $3.2 return on every dollar of arts investment in New Zealand, and that students in the inner city would have flow-on effects.
“This is a really radical thing, what happens when you get hundreds of young people into a piece of civic infrastructure.
“Just imagine this building, everywhere you look there’s someone practising and playing, so the building will just be alive with music all day.”
He said the venue could help build a future for young New Zealand musicians, who right now automatically look overseas for their careers.
“We have to offer actually something else, and I think culture is the thing that keeps young people in a town. Young people will get to make music, make art…
but they’ll also get to be a part of it.”
Chief Executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Marc Feldman said the acoustics in the town hall are phenomenal and the music won’t disappoint.
“It’s sonically incredible whether you have a solo cello, or 150 musicians on stage, it is just phenomenal, you can hear everybody breathing or you’re going to be able to hear the power of everything really up close, and the whole gamut of music is going to be here.”
Feldman said the NZSO will be based at the site 135 days a year, and Wellingtonians can expect all types of sounds from all types of genres.
Twenty-year-old trombonist Jakob Elijas, who has just completed three years of his music degree, said he wants the town hall to encourage other young musicians to study music.
“It’s the difference between feeling inspired to make art and feeling uninspired. I think that your environment really shapes the music or art you create, in the sense that it gives you something bigger than yourself to look up to and be inspired by.”
The Town Hall will reopen on 20 February next year with a sold-out performance by Drax Project and Bret McKenzie.
