Gordon Campbell, On Frank Gehry’s Lost Vision For Te Papa, Scoop, 13 January 2026
On December 5th, Frank Gehry died at the age of 96. That’s a reason to recall one of the great wasted opportunities in New Zealand’s cultural history. While Te Papa was in the planning stage, Gehry and local architect Ian Athfield jointly submitted a design proposal for the new national museum. Incredibly, their design failed to even make the shortlist.
If the Gehry/Athfield design had been accepted, Te Papa would have been Gehry’s next major architectural project to come on stream after Guggenheim Bilbao. For that reason alone, the unveiling of Te Papa would have been an international media event.