Dunedin wonders

Dunedin, in Otago, was settled by the Scots in 1848. Young Charles Kettle designed a plan reminiscent of Edinburgh’s, which would make sense as the name Dunedin is derived from the Gaelic for Edinburgh. Within 13 years the city was overwhelmed by a gold rush. The small city had much golden money pumped into it, as well as a lot of Victorian bluestone (ballast in the ships from Melbourne). The population hasn’t moved a lot since those days, and the locals are wondering how to reach beyond the heavy (but beautiful) Victorian architecture that still dominates the town.

A discussion was held last week to discuss the future of architecture in Dunedin, at which writer and curator Douglas Lloyd Jenkins suggested that Dunedin was, “like Adelaide – beautiful but dying”.

Some seem to be pinning their hopes on a contentious $180M roofed Rugby stadium , that would need to be built before the Rugby World Cup in 2011. Some people aren’t happy with it at all. Sports architecture behemoths HOK are in charge – not many are in love with the design, but they do seem to have done something interesting with the transparent(?) roof:

Posted by Peter on 27.08.08 in cities and video clips