‘Gothic folly’ for library?

Press, 28 August 1979, Page 6

‘Gothic folly’ for library?

Librarians at the Canterbury Public Library consider their present building a bit of a ruin, and the Christchurch City Council has been asked to make it official.

Members of the council’s cultural committee were asked yesterday to consider an idea which, the proponent suggested, they would find “totally bizarre at first glance.” Before the committee was a letter from Mr J. D. Rucinski, of the department of Asian languages at the University of Canterbury, who suggested that the more decorative exterior features of the building should be dismantled and reassembled on a more suitable site as a “Gothic folly.” “The Victorians enjoyed follies, although this more modern age belittles what it supposes to be fantastic and too impractical. But a folly could add a great deal of visual interest to such a drab place as the Ham campus with its warehouse architecture,” said Mr Rucinski. “The bandstand in Hagley Park, with its air of a Greek temple, makes a charming point when glimpsed through the trees. A pseudo-ruin on the Ilam campus, ivy-covered, halftumbling into the Avon, could provide a note of fun, fancy, and quaintness,” he said.

Mr Rucinski said that since the ide.a would be to build a ruin, the reassembly need not be very exact or finished, making it a cheap project. “I should say some student of art history could study the possibilities of the building and redesign it as a suitable ruin. If it is necessary that the folly have some utilitarian purpose, it could incorporate a terrace or something for lunch times, picnics, or outdoor recitals,” he said. The committee decided to thank Mr Rucinski for his suggestion, but will discuss the possibility of retaining the building on its present site, at the intersection of Hereford Street and Cambridge Terrace, after a report is received on the condition of the building