Discover Design Insights from Andrew Patterson

[Andrew Patterson] I've been asked to talk about the story of this building, so I'll limit it to that. This building actually demonstrates pretty well every product you've got, doesn't it? "Yeah. And it's as tight as a drum. It hasn't leaked at all." "Yeah." "We got it back." "Yeah, it's good. It's a good sign." So, the story of this building started in 1978. I didn't know about this at the time, not until years and years later. Unbeknown to me, a woman from Christchurch, who was quite stout, walked into Gal Langford's art gallery in Auckland on High Street. It was the place to be during the swinging '60s, '70s and '80s. She was wearing pearls and a cardigan and wandered right into the middle of this large white gallery filled with paintings. It was the sort of place where, if you had to ask how much the artworks were, they were too expensive for you. She announced to the glamorous blonde saleswoman that she was looking for a painting of Venice. The salesperson took one look at her. After all, Gal Langford was known for ultra-modern abstract art. John Gow, who was quite a switched-on character, had his office door slightly open and overheard the conversation. He immediately got up, walked out and said: "Look, I have a painting of Venice in here if you'd like to see it." She replied, "Oh yes, I'd love to see a painting of Venice." They rummaged through the storeroom. Francis Hodgkins had painted a scene of Venice, and they brought it out to show her. She looked quite ordinary and average, then asked: "Oh, that's nice. How much is it?" He replied, "Well, in today's money, it's about $120,000." She said, "That's great. I'll take it." And she walked out with it under her arm. About 20 years later, in 2011, she appeared unannounced in my office, probably wearing the same twinset and pearls, and sat down across from me. I didn't know anything about the meeting. I asked, "What is it that you want?" She said, "I want to build an art museum." I said, "Right." Then I asked, "Do you have a site?" "No, I don't have a site yet." We got talking and it became apparent she didn't have any money either, although she assured me it was coming. So I politely showed her the door because, when you come into an architect's office, you generally need a site, or at least some idea of one. I didn't hear anything more for a while. We were working on the Botanic Gardens building when I got a phone call from her. She said, "My husband Jim and I would like to take you to lunch." I thought, "Why not? I've got nothing to lose." So I went. They were delightful. They had met in a local accountancy practice when she was about 20 and Jim was perhaps 28. Jim was nine years older and had four children. They worked together for 10 years. Reading between the lines, they attended a conference in Wales together and stayed at a hotel called Ravenscar. I think Jim proposed about 10 years later, making it roughly a 20-year courtship. She was a powerhouse. The two of them were extraordinary together. Jim would finish her sentences. She did about five times as much talking as he did, but it worked perfectly. They completely charmed me. Before long, I realised they were one of those couples where one plus one equals three, and probably five in their case. It turned out they had owned a house on the cliffs that was destroyed in the earthquake. It had been red-stickered and lost most of its land. Because it was such an expensive property, it became one of the largest insurance claims following the 2011 earthquake. They were taking the insurance company to court and wanted to gift the settlement money to the city in order to create an art museum. The problem was that they still didn't have a site. They also had issues with the insurance policy because it specified that the payout could only be used to build another residential property. As you'll remember, insurance companies weren't paying out quickly after the earthquakes. Many claims dragged on for years, so they ended up in court. Another issue was that they hadn't realised the operating costs of running a museum would far exceed the capital cost of constructing one. Their insurance settlement was intended purely for the building itself, not for ongoing operations. Their dream, however, was clear: an art museum surrounded by a garden. So we suggested: "Why not get a site from the council and use a public park? We could arrange a series of pavilions around it." They thought it was a great idea. They approached the council and the mayor at the time to negotiate. Jenny Harper, the director of the museum down the road, was involved in those discussions. The two women were like nuclear submarines carefully manoeuvring around one another. Jenny Harper wanted the money for her museum. She couldn't see why a new building was needed. Her view was that the collection could simply be housed within the existing institution. But Susan was too clever for that. She needed operational funding and recognised that a separate museum would provide a way to secure it. She had also realised that many of New Zealand's major museums, established in the nineteenth century, were among the wealthiest cultural institutions in their cities. She charmed the people at the museum across the road and eventually identified this site, which at the time was not a park but a car park. She negotiated the deal. She was a powerhouse. Then they returned to the insurance company. Fortunately, the site was zoned residential. We submitted a consent application showing windows all around the building. We eventually realised there was nothing in New Zealand law that said if a window appeared on the drawings it actually had to be built. So, during the consenting stage, the building looked rather like a block of Swiss cheese. We got consent. She secured the insurance payout, and suddenly everything was moving forward. It was fantastic. We started designing the museum. We developed the concept into four pavilions arranged on the former car park site. Then we twisted the roof. Essentially, they were simple Monopoly-house forms. The main architectural move was to grab the whole composition and rotate the roof geometry. I think we twisted it by about 26 degrees around the building ridges. The pavilions were connected by walkways and gaps, and the entire form became subtly distorted within the computer model. Every part of the building ended up being different. It was a clever way to create a highly complex-looking building very quickly. Every elevation became unique and suddenly the spaces felt alive, while still remaining relatively straightforward to build because the underlying forms were so simple. That was really the key architectural move. Eventually, after about five years, we finally received a proper brief. It arrived handwritten on roughly a page and a half torn from a shopping-list pad, and it was barely intelligible. Nevertheless, we designed the building, spent a long time refining it, and worried over every detail. When everything was finally ready, Susan was flying up to Auckland to see it.