Chris Bishop’s plan to pass a new law specifically to demolish one ugly building is a hilariously petty solution to a ridiculous problem.

When housing minister Chris Bishop announced an amendment to the RMA that would make it legal to demolish the Gordon Wilson flats, he celebrated by posting a photoshopped image on social media of himself riding a wrecking ball into the flats. The headline of the official press release sent last Tuesday was “Gordon Wilson flats’ heritage protection goneburger”, a sentence that could have only been written by cabinet’s most Twitter-brained minister. 

That parliament will pass a new law with the sole function of making it legal to demolish this specific abandoned apartment block is undeniably funny. It’s legislative speak for “fuck this building in particular”.

“It’s not a step that we take lightly, but there have been two previous attempts to delist them, and both have failed,” Bishop said on Tuesday, addressing media in front of the abandoned 87-unit apartment complex on the Terrace. “When the council wants them gone, Wellingtonians want them gone, and the owner of the building wants them gone, the government has taken the simple and pragmatic view that it is time to get rid of them.” 

For 13 years, the Gordon Wilson flats have been stuck in a doom spiral. Too expensive (and arguably impossible) to repair, but illegal to demolish, they’ve instead been left to decay, paint fading and the facade crumbling, deteriorating into an ugly, uninhabitable eyesore. 

Let’s go back to the start. The Gordon Wilson flats opened in 1959, at a time when Wellington’s population was rising rapidly and there was a severe housing shortage. The government architect Gordon Wilson, for whom the flats are named, designed them in a modernist style typical of high-rise public housing in the post-war era. The building was given heritage protection in Wellington’s district plan in 1995 and was listed as a category 1 historic place by Heritage New Zealand in 2021.

The flats were good, affordable housing. Each unit was small but with high ceilings that made them feel airy. The landlord, Housing New Zealand, painted the exterior in bright rainbow colours. Thousands of people lived there over the years, most of whom have fond memories of the place. 

The story turned sour in 2011 when an engineer’s report identified structural issues. The residents were evacuated in May 2012. The building was deemed uninhabitable. It was riddled with asbestos and so fragile that it could collapse from an earthquake, strong winds, or even, according to one assessment, “a large person falling heavily at a critical location”. 

Housing New Zealand saw no realistic way to repair the damage, so in 2014 it sold the site to Victoria University of Wellington. The university initially planned to demolish the building and build new educational and research facilities on the site. That plan was scuppered in 2017 when advocacy group the Architectural Centre won an Environment Court case against the university, upholding the building’s heritage status and blocking the demolition. While heritage advocates celebrated the legal victory, it did nothing to change the condition of the building. The flats continued to decay, becoming increasingly dangerous and less repairable. 

Campaigners insisted the university should repair the building. The Architectural Centre released a 3D model imagining how the building could be repurposed, complete with a cable car to Kelburn. Of course, it’s easy to imagine pretty redesigns when you don’t have any financial stake in the project. That doesn’t mean it is viable. The university hasn’t shown any interest in the proposal, nor has any other property developer offered to cough up the dough.

The university tried again in 2020 with a proposal called Te Huanui – Pathway to the City, featuring three academic buildings, an atrium and a plaza that would provide a pedestrian connection to the Kelburn campus. Responding to public sentiment that favoured new housing, it later changed its plan to be focused on student accommodation. 

Wellington City Council was keen to support the development. At the university’s request, the council voted to remove the building’s heritage protections in 2024. But even that, it seemed, would not fly. Despite a majority vote by the elected body, it was legally dubious whether the council actually had the power to remove the protections. Bishop, as the minister responsible for signing off the district plan, declined the move; not because he didn’t want to see the building demolished, but because he was afraid it would be vulnerable to a judicial review by a heritage advocacy group. 

The courts wouldn’t let the building be demolished. The council – the entity that gave the building its legal protections in the first place – was seemingly powerless to change it. Well-funded advocacy groups were willing to launch legal action. The feasibility of repairs, already slim at the beginning, was now nonexistent. The legal system forced this decaying wreck to keep standing. There was no recourse. No other option. Which is why it came to this. The trump card of the New Zealand legal system. Parliamentary supremacy. 

Predictably, the minister’s announcement has had heritage advocates crying foul. Heritage New Zealand’s Jamie Jacobs told the NZ Herald he had “serious concerns about the long-term wisdom of this outcome”. Historic Places Wellington chair Felicity Wong, writing in The Post, claimed the building’s earthquake-prone status was “misinformation”. 

There is a well-known principle in architecture: “Form follows function.” It means the purpose of a building should be the starting point for its design. The heritage values and architectural innovations of the Gordon Wilson flats come from the building’s function as a source of dense, affordable housing. According to the Heritage New Zealand listing, the Gordon Wilson flats have “historical significance because of their association with the state housing programme” and are “uniquely placed to demonstrate that chapter of New Zealand’s response to the need for housing”.

The idea that the building should be kept empty, or forcibly repaired at exorbitant cost, as a totemic reminder of affordable housing in a city with an active housing crisis is a cruel irony. The Gordon Wilson flats served their function for 53 years. They no longer do. All the collective nostalgia in the world won’t change that.