Beehive design ‘a sore thumb’

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32568, 30 March 1971, Page 18

Beehive design ‘a sore thumb’

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, March 29. The new beehive building for Parliament was an ugly monument to mediocrity, the Labour M.P. for Grey Lynn (Mr E. E. Isbey) said today.

Speaking at a Rotary luncheon in Auckland, he described the building as a pyramid of poor taste and aesthetically deprived. "A simple law of architecture has been completely denied and that is that any building should bear a relationship to its location. More particularly, a building for a country’s Parliament should relate to its history and tradition, yet still be contemporary,” he said. “The beehive has no relationship to anything in New Zealand. “The existing Parliament Building has a charm, a dignity and a direct relationship in construction to an earlier New Zealand environment.

“It would have been quite possible to design an additional construction, although modem in concept, that would have been m harmony with this present building of another period.” Mr Isbey said that because the beehive design was fixed, inflexible and rigid, nothing could be done with it to allow

for future changing needs in a changing environment. “There it will sit, sticking out like a sore thumb against an alien environment, like some monstrous expensive joke,” he said.

“Is it too late for it to be rescued and to allow some of our fine New Zealand architects, knowing our country, its traditions and its climate, to design a building that belongs, is visually exciting, and will fill us all with a sense of pride,” he asked.