Renown local Fred Van Brandenburg unveils stunning new global architectural wonder
It’s not every day I get an invitation to the Grand Hall at Parliament (it’s NEVER happened before), so I was heartbroken to have to turn it down. Our own Fred Van Brandenburg was being interviewed, together with his son Damien, by Ian Fraser, about an extraordinary project he’s done in Shenzhen, near the border with Hong Kong.
The building is incredible, but the way it all came about was even more so. The owner of a top Chinese fashion brand Marisfrolg had been travelling in New Zealand in 2006 and stayed at some of our country’s most beautiful lodges. She was very taken with the design of Huka Lodge, Millbrook and Wharekauhau and wanted to know who the architects were. Amazed that Fred had been involved in all of them, she headed straight for his studio at Lake Hayes. Oddly enough, Fred had just decided to stop those traditional building styles, having recently returned to Barcelona to study the work of Gaudi, and was keen to adopt ideas based more on nature’s shapes. It was hard to have a discussion via the interpreter, and nothing much was said, but she seemed very interested in the model he was busy gluing together for his new ideas on building. She said that when they found the right piece of land, they’d like him to be the architect. He thought nothing more of it.
Two years later, a fax arrived saying they now had their land, and wanted him to design it. When he asked for information about the budget and other tiny details, they just said “Design first, budget second”. And so it began…
It took three years for the design and working drawings to be completed with a Chinese construction company. Fred and Damien set up an office in Dunedin with the majority of staff members being graduates from the Otago Polytech Product Design school who were modelmaking experts running the brand-new 3D printers and other whizz bang technology. The new thinking for design was to make models first, and then do drawings. The head of Otago Polytech Phil Kerr came to see what his former students were doing and suggested exhibiting the models at the 2014 Venice Biennale. It was a massive success.
With such radically different design, everyone was on a very steep learning curve and once building started, the steep learning curve got even steeper. Fred wanted the building to look hand-made, and didn’t want expert tilers He wanted workmen who wanted to learn, and as they wanted to use as much ceramic industry waste as possible, they had scoured every ceramic factory in the vicinity for their offcuts and castoffs. He also noticed in Murano, Italy, that there was a lot of beautiful slag being wasted, and every regular building industry has huge offcuts of marble and granite that are discarded, so then they started sourcing these unwanted materials, which now form the protection for Marisfrolg’s exposed concrete surfaces. New Zealand could learn a lot from this philosophy - the amount of perfectly good building materials that get sent straight to landfill is appalling.
Using nature’s shapes to build with is so exciting - curves are much more intriguing than dead straight lines. Rivers and trees and mountains are all more beautiful than big box malls and billboards. Who could possibly prefer a straight, grey road lined with bossy signs and ugly shops over a curving mossy trail through wildflowers, streams and rocks?
Lucky China getting this stunning new building - apparently nearly six times larger than our own Te Papa AND about six times more expensive. BUT... there’s a chance we’ll get some Fred van Brandenburg magic happening here. Lake Wakatipu may well be going to be graced with a gloriously curvaceous hotel, some fortunate (and rich!) people may be able to buy land with the plans for a new house that won’t have all that dull, square greyness and fingers very tightly crossed that the utterly brilliant Olive Leaf Centre will finally come into being in Arrowtown. Of course, Fred’s very keen to see it use as much recycled material as possible, and to employ people who want to learn the new skills needed to work with these organic shapes and materials.
I know the Olive Leaf Centre has its opponents, but reading some of the stories about the reactions to other new styles of building shows that great change is always unsettling. The Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, and many more have all been the subject of furious criticism. George Orwell said of the Sagrada Familia “I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance...”
Imagine our world if we only just kept building the same old same old way.
