| WHY GO |
| Frank Gehry was reputedly so taken with Wellington - New Zealand's capital city - that he offered to design a Bilbao-esque art gallery for the city, a building that would have transformed its famously blustery waterfront. With its crumbling 1970s buildings, the New Zealand capital was in desperate need of an architectural saviour. And so it remains, Gehry's offer having apparently been rejected. Apart from the Beehive, the colloquial name for the parliament building, the entire city looks as though it might be dismantled, loaded on a truck and reassembled on some less distinguished site - a common practice in New Zealand as it turns out. And invariably, the first-time visitor arrives to find a grey, windy city huddled above a southern sea. But Wellington does have a sunnier side, manifested by its determined attempt to shake off the dowdy, conservative image, reinventing itself first as a city of gourmands (it has more bars, restaurants and cafés per head than New York) and latterly as the home of New Zealand's hobbit-led film industry. By basing himself here, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has guaranteed the future of 'Welliwood'. |
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