Such a question will no doubt be met with cries of “What is this woman on about?” And justifiably so. New Zealand’s current stock of architectural heritage is thinly spread, under-researched, under-resourced, largely uncared for and still struggling under the weight of a nineteenth-century bias. It survives, it could be argued, from recession to recession; a tempered, stagnant, or backward economy countering the illogics of progress, where signals of the past are often substituted for fostering an economic culture.
Preciousness, taonga, city council heritage officers, the NZHPT and the MCH are surely the answer to fighting the battle, if not the war, waged constantly on architectural heritage. (more…)