Sixty years after outspoken British architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis caused a political furore in New Zealand, he looks set to fire some barbs from his grave about its architecture.
Recording discs about his trip here in 1948, thought to have been burned but found in an attic years
later, are being released as a CD next week.
Sir Clough, who died in 1978 aged 95, spent several weeks with his wife Amabel on an architectural tour of New Zealand, where their daughter had settled.
In his autobiography, Architect Errant, he described how a reception that Prime Minister Peter Fraser hosted in his honour turned sour.
"In New Zealand, a welcoming party given by the Prime Minister started off a blazing and exhilarating row between myself and his highly bellicose Minister of Housing, which crackled in the newspapers for days with the utmost gaiety," Sir Clough wrote. "But the PM took the affair seriously and... laid on a second placatory reception and generously put an official chauffeur and car at the disposal of Amabel and myself for as complete a reconnaissance of both islands as we cared to make..."
After meeting architects and planners around the country, in return for "so much fraternal friendliness" he decided to record a "planning credo and commentary with special reference to New Zealand's many problems".
He described his recorded talks as "poisoned shafts" and admitted to feeling "a little cowardly" in not being in New Zealand to take the feedback.
Sir Clough's grandson, Robin Llywelyn, who found the recordings in 1984, said he believed the talks were still relevant today.
"They were intended as a leaving present to give his thoughts on New Zealand and his different ideas on architecture, the environment and town planning," Mr Llywelyn told the Western Mail newspaper.
Mr Llywelyn manages Portmeirion, the Italianate village in Wales that Sir Clough built and which became the setting for 1960s cult television show The Prisoner.
The 67-minute CD of the talks will be played at a public event in Portmeirion next Thursday.
- NZPA
