10-05-2025
Archway lecture theatre: Treasure or toilet block?
An award-winning Otago University lecture theatre slated for demolition has been slammed as "hideous", "fugly as hell" and looking like "a toilet block".
The Otago Daily Times yesterday reported that the Dunedin City Council was considering stepping in to save the Archway Lecture Theatre building from the wrecking ball. University wants to demo building
The building is on a draft list of 146 to be protected under changes to the district plan, but university vice-chancellor Grant Robertson wants it down. What do you think of the building? Let us know
The building went up in 1974 and won a New Zealand Institute of Architects Southern Architecture Award for Enduring Architecture in 2020.
In a heritage assessment report the DCC said: "This building is both unique and special to Dunedin. It also contributes to a nationwide body of Brutalist architecture."
However, many ODT readers have expressed far less favourable views of the building.
Former student Jeremy Callander didn't hold back
"I think I speak for every single human being that has ever had to sit through a lecture or an exam in the Archway Lecture Theatre, when I say that the Archway Lecture Theatre the worst.
"The Richardson Building looks like a maximum security prison. The Commerce Building looks like the administration block of a maximum security prison at mardi gras. But the Archway Lecture Theatre takes the cake: it looks like a toilet block.
"Ooooh, it won a prize did it? News flash: you can pin a ribbon on a giant cow turd - doesn't make it cheese cake.
"To the university: just tear the damn thing down. You can ask for forgiveness later."
Readers on social media also had frank views on the building.
One called it "the ugliest building in education", another called it "hideous", and someone else said it was "fugly as hell. Bowl the bloody thing."
A minority of commenters wanted the building kept.
University music lecturer Andrew Perkins said: "They're wonderful, very well designed, and have everything going for them. I've been lecturing in them the past few years, and they're great!"
Another person said they loved Archway's "cheesy brutalist style. Keep Dunedin weird and leave it alone".
Mark Baxter, a life member of the Otago University Students Association, said it was "the only strongly Brutalist building left on the campus and is part of a set of very different architectural styles from different ages closely grouped together making an architectural history of NZ display, hence I think it'd be an architectural crime to demolish them".
- APL
