A new order

IN THEIR SUBMISSION FOR THIS YEAR’S NZIA Awards, the architects of the transformed South Atrium and adjoining galleries of Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Auckland War Memorial Museum, make much of the golden mean. They talk of the 1929 colonial colossus on the hill of Pukekawa in the Auckland Domain as a great example of neoclassical architecture: a building to be much admired for its proportions. Never mind the somewhat absurd idea of importing an alien Greek Doric temple form, emblematic of the origins of European culture, here to Aotearoa.

The proportional framework is, of course, the golden mean: a “geometric discipline of sublime proportion”, underpinning classical architecture and “a naturally occurring fractal, or never-ending geometric pattern, with specific proportions that pleasingly resonate with the human sense of aesthetics”,