Heritage battle rumbles on over Wellington bungalow

Tuesday, 20 August 2024

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The Government is looking at legislation this year to unwrap New Zealand’s vexed heritage issue that has been typified by a Ngaio bungalow with the same protection as Wellington’s Town Hall.

Kahn House on Trelissick Crescent, Ngaio, was designed by Austrian émigré architect Ernst Plischke and built in 1941. It has a heritage listing from Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and heritage protection from the Wellington City Council – which can mean tight and costly restrictions on what can be done to the house. The owner opposes the listing.

The Voluntary Heritage Group, a group set up to lobby for property owners’ rights, recently met with Resource Management Act Reform Minister Chris Bishop calling for law changes meaning that heritage listings could only be placed on buildings with owners’ consent.

The rare exemption to this would be places of “genuine national interest” and decided on tests, such as a survey, with the authority making the listing picking up associated extra costs, group convenor Phil Barry said.

Heritage has been a hot-button issue in Wellington as the council recently rewrote its district plan and decided what heritage or character areas maintained protection and what could be bowled for more housing. The starkest image of heritage versus development battle is the crumbling and closed Gordon Wilson Flats on The Terrace, which the council tried to remove the heritage listing from before Bishop rejected because of insufficient evidence from the council.

Kahn house also got caught in the same process.

In a statement on Monday, Bishop said he intended to include details in the Government’s second Resource Management Act Amendment Bill to help with the “heritage issue”. He would not give details of what was planned.

“I’m actively looking at the vexed issue of heritage listings and what people are allowed to do with heritage buildings,” Bishop said.

“Generally speaking, my view is that New Zealand’s cities can’t and shouldn’t be museums. They have to change, grow, and adapt into thriving liveable cities.”

Wellington City councillor Ben McNulty said it was crazy that a residential home that most people did not know about had the same heritage listing as the Wellington Town Hall.

According to the council’s heritage evaluation, Kahn House was a notable example of Modernist architecture and “displays the typical characteristics of the Modern Movement style, including open planning, intersecting rectangular forms, large areas of glass, and wide overhanging eaves.”

Heritage NZ central region director Jamie Jacobs said heritage listings did not drop house values. Kahn House was listed after a robust process and it easily met the grade for a category 1 listing – the highest listing available.

“The modernist house … was entered onto the list as a Category 1 place for its aesthetic, architectural, cultural, historical and technological values,” Jacobs said.

The house was first listed with HNZ In 2005 with the“full support of the owner at the time” and the new owner, Sophie Kahn, would have been aware of this when she took possession, Jacobs said.

There was no cost to being on the Heritage NZ listing, which was there for information purposes. However, the council listing could mean restrictions in work and associated costs in getting permission, a spokeswoman said.

Sophie Kahn, whose grandparents originally commissioned the Kahn House and who still lived there, in 2022 submitted to the council asking for her home to be removed from the heritage list.

“Unfortunately, I have felt no interest, empathy, understanding or respect forthcoming from council as to my position,” she said.

“I have, at every turn, been dismissed; told my concerns are ‘incorrect’; and that I am simply incapable of understanding that this is an ‘honour’ and something I should be happy about.”

The council was approached for comment.

Correction:** This story has been updated to say Sophie Kahn’s grandparents, not parents, commissioned the house.**