When Te Papa was built in the late 1980s the spectre
of Frank Gehry hung over the result. At Ian Athfield's invitation Gehry had been
part of a proposal for the building but it didn’t make the final cut. That Gehry
went on to deliver the hugely acclaimed Guggeheim Museum at Bilbao has always
encouraged NZ critics to wave the we-could-have-had-that stick. It was indeed a
great period for him. We saw another wonderful building that would have been
in Gehry’s mind when he was thinking about Te Papa. This one is the stunning University
of Toledo Art Building attached to the neo classical Toledo Art Museum. Often
such co-locations are riddled with corny ‘references’ to the original building
in terms of form and decoration, but not this time. Gehry has chosen to see the
art museum as what Billy Apple would call ‘a given’ and responded with a
tumbling mid-Western fort that updates the columned treasure chest
metaphor. More recently the
Japanese team SANAA have added a brilliant glassed in courtyard. The addition is so seamless we assumed it was part of the Gehry
original and only learned later of SANAA’s role. Perhaps SANAA could come over and
work with Te Papa #daydreambeliever.
