Locovisual

The Embassy Theatre built in 1924 is an iconic piece of Wellingtonian architecture. Though it has undergone a series of restorations you can see in the comparison above that the structure of it has remained the same since its construction. The pillars on the front appear to be flattened ionic columns and above them we see embedded plates and urns. The face is topped with a Greek pediment and the detailing below the pediment is a meander border

 commonly used in classical art it can be compared to the detailing on St Catherine’s Church (Foulston, 1823.)

In the documentary Civilisation Lord Kenneth Clark discusses the Greek struggle towards an ideal perfection and imposing upon this upon the physical world. He speaks about their architecture as being “so satisfying to the mind and eye that it lasted relatively unchanged for 600 years,”(1969.) He paints classicism as the style of unwavering reliability and neoclassicism as a means of evoking that same sturdy authority.

New Zealand’s population would have contained many people who emigrated from Europe bringing with them this restrained order. This choice of style for The Embassy Theatre could be seen as a means of recreating ‘the motherland’ by conforming to the style universally recognised, especially across Europe, as the embodiment of prestige and good taste. In his book Doremus discusses the “Dissociation between the material reality of a building and one’s perception of that reality,”(1994) This could be taken to mean that more than just seeing the columns or details that make this building neoclassical we also see the ideals that it stands for.

New Zealand, being a relatively young country, did not have the rich, sophisticated or well-known history of many other countries. The architecture of the time had to rebuff the misconceptions that other nations may have had about the country being primitive or unremarkable.

Even recently eyes from all over the world have been drawn to the Embassy Theatre which played host to the world premieres of films such as Lord of the Rings and King Kong. It stands as a magnificent monument to Wellington’s rich and diverse architectural culture.

Reference List

Mordaunt, J. (1972). The Greek Revival. London: J Murray ltd.

Gill, M.(Producer), & Montagon, P.(Producer). (1969). Civilisation [Documentary]. United Kingdom: BBC.

Doremus, T. (1994). Classical Styles in Modern Architecture. New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold.