Bad Architecture: The Problem of the Primitive Hut and the Design of New Zealand’s First Gaol

Abstract

ABSTRACT New Zealand’s first gaol was built at Okiato in 1840. Like many other gaol buildings built in this period of New Zealand’s colonial history, it has been dismissed as ad hoc and inadequate. Building on work by John Stacpoole, this paper argues that this was not the case, but instead –like the official residence of the British Resident, James Busby (now known as the Treaty House at Waitangi), – New Zealand’s earliest gaol was a deliberate design, consequent of New Zealand’s status as an extension of New South Wales (NSW), and it attributes the design to discredited NSW’s Colonial Architect Ambrose Hallen, the erstwhile editor of John Verge’s Waitangi Treaty House design. The mistaking of Hallen’s Okiato gaol as building rather than architecture was a result of its apparently rudimentary nature, and the New Zealand Centennial’s positioning of New Zealand architecture as directly inherited from Britain – consequently bypassing the significant role of NSW in New Zealand’s earliest colonial architecture, and facilitating the historical belittling of Hallen’s value as an architect.