More than a sign of excess, it’s a tourist attraction
Itook time out this week – on a freezing day – to visit our new historic monument. Or should I say newish-kind-of-reconditioned monument? Commando archaeologists will know the terminology.
It’s the impressive pillar outside the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment in Wellington; a work of art, surely, that is perpendicular and cost $67,000.
When you pay that kind of money you’re expecting a thing to be durable, so I was disappointed that the ministry’s name is written at the bottom of the arty phallus.
Had it been at the top they could have cut it off next time the building changes hands, and every time thereafter, which would have been a true economy. Instead it will end up in a future general auction where on a good day – it looks like those metal bolts could rust – they might get $100 for it.
Media coverage of the work hasn’t done it justice.
It is truly tall, and the words on it are correctly spelt.
Tourists will definitely want to take selfies with it to show they’ve been to Stout St, Wellington, New Zealand.
I didn’t do that myself because when I switch on my camera app a weird woman with large nostrils appears onscreen and freaks me out.
The monument reminds me of Saddam Hussein and his many monuments to himself, which figures because Britain plans to send commando archaeologists into his former neck of the woods to rescue antiquities imperilled by Isis, whose fighters like blowing old things up.
Your mental picture of a typical archaeologist may have been like mine was hitherto; ie, guys in striped home-knitted pullovers and husky women with plaits, but I am awed at picturing them with guns. Coolness.
I can’t say I visited the building’s $260,889.26 roof deck and meeting space feature, but there would be icicles there.
Think how pleasant it will be for the bureaucrats on the six days a year when Wellington doesn’t have gale-force winds.
I saw the fabulous $140,000 curved screen though, which changes its big words in a clever way from one message to another, and so forth.
One message said it was Matariki, so it is au courant as we monument-spotters put it.
The $5 million reception area seemed to be full of busy, youngish women wearing businesslike skirts just above the knee.
They were holding clipboards, or sitting at the new tables giving each other face time, as they call it in the heady business, innovation and employment world – where nobody is unemployed. In fact chief executive David Smol is paid $600,000, a trifle in keeping with an economising government.
Smol OKed the $400 hair straighteners for staff, who want to look pretty after their lunchtime run, which seems sensible. If you watch American TV you’ll know how important hair is.
It’s the monument and the whole look of the ministry on the outside that I want to focus on, though. It has a history, as archaeologists will appreciate.
In 1939 it was Defence House, and had simple art deco motifs on the portico above its main entrance. It has different motifs today, but elsewhere.
In 1985, at the last refurbishment, the original stone on the building’s exterior had developed a leakage problem, and was replaced.
There is a plaque for that refurbishment commemorating the Right Honourable RJ Tizard. A few people may remember who he was. An equally modest ($1700) plaque records minister Steven Joyce was responsible for the new do.
The bold monument naming the building relies on an immaculate finish for aesthetic impact. Two original pedestals crowned with deco light fittings beside the grand entrance don’t need it.
On the outer side of each an older feature has been removed; you can see its outline in the stone; and a piece of white plastic pipe protrudes, with a white plastic cover.
Algae is flourishing there on both sides, due to apparent leakage of some kind.
In all the fuss about the cost of doing up the building nobody has credited the ministry with economising on this fetching, slimy green feature. The local plumber did them proud.