Architect out to save heart of Auckland

By ANNE GIBSON

Historic preservationist Allan Matson believes short-sighted developers out for easy money are ruining Auckland's heart.

The bicycle-riding historically minded Mr Matson, 41, lives in a CBD warehouse apartment that sits above a changing landscape, particularly towards Wakefield St, where the now-protected Fitzroy Hotel stands.

Although not yet a fully registered architect, he works in the sector - but when he has a spare minute he battles to save historic buildings.

So far he has managed to do something few others have. Almost single-handedly he has saved a building whose owners already had resource consent to demolish it.

Mr Matson still smarts about how he lost his first fight, to save the building next to the Baptist Tabernacle Church on the corner of Queen St and Karangahape Rd.

In March last year, he featured in the Herald, saying the distinctive building on the northwest corner of the prominent intersection gave the area character and its demolition meant more Auckland history would be lost.

The defeat taught him to go into battle against the authorities armed with their own rule book - the Resource Management Act - and in his second stoush he has emerged the victor.

But he flinches about a Herald letter to the editor published on April 30 from Denis James of Royal Oak, who accused him of having "misguided zealotry", decried the Fitzroy as an "old dog" and said developers should be left to demolish it.

Mr Matson took exception.

He is no stranger to controversy, and said he came from "a long line of stirrers", although his father, he stressed, would instead call them people who stood up for what was right.

Educated at Christ's College in Christchurch, he initially worked as a merchant banker, shunning his preferred field of architecture because he lacked the confidence to take the plunge.

"I was always arty as a kid but no good at maths or physics so I thought I could never be an architect.

"Dad said to do a commerce degree because everything was about business."

So Mr Matson went to Victoria University in Wellington for his commerce degree, then worked for Southpac as a merchant banker, moving to England to work at JP Morgan in its mergers and acquisitions division.

That led into property management and a course at the "snooty" Inchbald School of Design in London, then to work for a London developer on mansion blocks.

On his return to New Zealand in 1995, he did an architecture degree at Unitec but struggled to get a job afterwards.

He has been working in architecture for just six months and during much of that time has been fighting to save old buildings.

Mr Matson takes inspiration from his godfather, the late Erebus commissioner Justice Peter Mahon.

"Mahon said with every right there is a duty," Mr Matson said, so he believes that those working in the building sector carry a responsibility to preserve the city's heritage.

"Can you imagine the Brits knocking over a Norman church?

"People think progress means new. But Paris and London are what they are for what they have left, not what they most recently built," said Mr Matson, citing the great British architect Sir Christopher Wren's famous one-liner about designing buildings to be judged in 500 years' time.

Mr Matson said the Fitzroy's predicament was symptomatic of the way the city council dealt with heritage buildings.

"Aucklanders and their council should take better care of what is left to pass on to future generations. Today's greed is tomorrow's poverty."

* Mr Matson can be contacted by email.