Television Studio Site

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31142, 19 August 1966, Page 10

Television Studio Site

Opawa residents who have objected to the building of radio and television studios near their homes should now be less disturbed. In guiding the Christchurch City Council on the attitude it should take towards the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation’s application for a departure from the zoning of the area the town-planning committee of the council has recommended very reasonable limits to the heights of the proposed buildings. This should dispel fears that the corporation might erect obtrusive buildings in a residential zone. As an urban activity, television belongs inside the city; the Opawa site, for which there seems to be no reasonable alternative, is a compromise between the convenience of the city centre and the quietude of a rural site. No-one has had the advantage of seeing plans for the buildings for no plans exist. The corporation is bound to accept the obligation to produce structures that will give the least offence to the residents who find it their neighbour. Its architects and landscapers should go further and produce plans for something far more agreeable than another block of suburban rooftops and chimneys. The studio buildings may have no television aerials at all—certainly none that could not be built inconspicuously into the structure. There is no reason why the corporation should not design buildings which would be, at the very least, as congenial as a school in a residential suburb. The committee recommended that the remainder of the eight acres of the site should be landscaped to the satisfaction of the council. In exchange for a departure from the town plan, the corporation would hardly object to a similar provision on building design. If the council sought to approve the general character and external appearance of the buildings as a condition of its support for a departure from the town plan it would, quite properly, be asking the corporation to acknowledge the public interest which the plan aims to advance and protect.