Greytown Town Centre appeals

After all these years of watching one nice old building being pulled down after another, it's nice for a change to see Wairarapa architectural history not only being saved but also sensitively refurbished.
While the subject of this review is the former Greytown Town Hall now the Greytown Town Centre I have to mention in passing the excellent job done on the old Horseshoe Bar in upper Queen Street, Masterton, which has been given back much of its 1950s Deco glory.
What I like most about the new Greytown Town Centre is how the refurbishment has not only saved the past but in many of its design features managed to expose this past to public view.
Far too often old buildings have had the history restored out of them, even if the intentions were good.
And where buildings have been saved, it has usually been the facade while the interiors have been stripped or demolished.
This was once due merely to insensitivity to history but in fact that pales in comparison with the impact new insurance rules put in place over the past few years are having on the interiors of New Zealand's older buildings.
Try getting insurance for a home built before 1945 (or slightly earlier depending on the insurance company) and you may find you are out of luck unless you have proof the building has been re-gibbed (along with other demands like reclading, reroofing and new plumbing).
So, for instance, owners are forced to replace lovely old tongue-in-grove interior walls with mundane and not necessarily long-lasting gib.
Getting back to the Greytown Town Centre, architect Chris Kelly, of Architectural Workshop, has managed very successfully to save and expose the former town hall's history, making it part of the contemporary design.
The metaphor which was used at the opening was "giving air to the ancestors of the building".
This is an important point as it is very easy to give a building, and a town like Greytown, a country theme rather than a true country character I call it "country kitsch".
A very simple but effective example of this is the way the original native wood studs have been left exposed as a decorative feature.
Where new material has been added, generally speaking it is in keeping with the character of the building for instance the use of plywood with a matt polyurethane finish as cladding for the interior walls and shelves an idea that could easily be employed by a lot more new homes.
The original town hall, for all its historical value, was dark and cold, plus it had had unappealing additions, including a kitchen at the front and toilets on the southern side.
It's impressive that Kelly has made the inside so inviting and replaced the recent additions with new features that serve to enhance the character and practicality of the building.
The north, sunny side of the building has been reclad using a product called Danapalon which lets in filtered light while acting as insulation equivalent to double-glazed windows.
Aluminium louvres on the outside of the Danapalon cladding are angled at 51 degrees to reduce the amount of direct sunlight that falls on the opaque cladding, stopping the inside of the building from overheating.
The toilet block on the south side of the building has been removed, with the south wall extended out another few metres, giving more space to the Bridge Club room downstairs and giving room for an internal stairway up to the first-floor offices and library space which has been nicely decorated with historic photographs.
The kitchen at the front of the building has been demolished and replaced with a replica of the original viewing platform from which, I assume, speakers would address the crowd below in the old days.
There is one section of the first-floor platform which is original, however, and that is the cast-iron pillars used to support it which had resided at Cobblestones Settlers Museum in Greytown for many years.
Kelly has made the utmost of the actually limited space of the building. The old stage is now the reception area for Greytown Library.
Beneath the stage is a temperature-controlled archival room, and where the audience would once sit to view the performance on stage, there is now "forum" space which can be used for functions and extended in size by opening two large revolving doors which separate it from the Bridge Club room.
Many other purposes have been integrated into the refurbishment including office space which can be accessed separately to the library, space for an I-centre at the front entrance, and creatively-designed kitchens and toilets.
Doors on the north side open out towards the nearby town square.
The building is full of lovely textural touches which also have a practical purposes such as the thick dowling poles on the first floor which create an attractive visual screen at the same time as fulfilling security and safety purposes.
The colour scheme for both the inside and outside of the building uses an excellent choice of soft "heritage" colours.
Overall, an excellent job done which will make an important contribution to maintaining Greytown's colonial character and an excellent point of reference for others thinking of saving buildings for posterity at the same time as giving them a new lease on life.