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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 25, No. 6. 1962.

Sibelius and Silence

Sibelius and Silence

The furniture had been designed not to clutter; the divan was also the bed, the table was made to take a typewriter, the bookshelves could be adjusted along the woodwork panelling to take all the textbooks for Economics III in winter and pots of maidenhair fern in summer as desired. Above all the room had been built for privacy and the insulation of sound, so that there was a double layer of brick within the walls and a layer of wave plastic between the concrete and the floor tiles. The central heating was supplied by convectors which do not gurgle from room to room. Altogether it was possible to work in the most satisfactory silence while Sibelius was thundering next door. The final inspiration lay in the coating of the walls with stamoid, an elegant plastic wallpaper, which never shows drawing pin marks. I myself, jaded with the whole idea of hostels after nine years of residence in institutions of one sort or another, would have liked to live in such a room. The point of it all was not simply that in a place built also as a hostel, such ideal accommodation could be afforded. The accommodation Had to be of this standard before one could charge a high enough tariff to make the hotel economical in the first place. And the Casa Academica, built in contemporary style for light and privacy, could compete against any hotel of the same grade in the city.

I remembered in time that I was meant to be representing not only the people who like privacy unlimited, but also more gregarious souls. Where should they all meet? Well, said Mr Scheltema, they could meet in each other's rooms —hostel dwellers and flat dwellers had a way of doing that in any case. And then there was the restaurant. It was easier to sit down and get to the bottom of Berkeley around a table in the restaurant than at any university high table. But if you chose not to eat at the restaurant, you could still bring food downstairs and cook it in the nearest kitchen. There was a kitchen, with lockers and tables and chairs as well as stoves, to each twelve rooms. In default of a separate staircase it served as a sociological focus for a small group within the larger unit of the corridor.

Difficulties ? Well married students were a difficulty. If a married couple preferred to stay in the city for those three summer months it was not as easy for them as for a single student to find a temporary vacancy in someone else's flat. Still, if as I'd said, students were generally younger in New Zealand than in Holland and Denmark and a smaller proportion of them were married, perhaps there would be enough single students to fill up 300 rooms? I said that according to official estimates there would be enough to fill twice that number. As for conferences, they'd had to go north for lack of room in the capital city.

"Well," said he, "I'd capitalise on that. You see, it works. The whole thing. Why don't you try one yourself in Wellington? A Casa Academica."

Then I asked, knowing I was being unreasonable—what about the Concept of a Hall of Residence? Any university community according to our ideal should include staff as well as students. To ask for this on top of all the rest! Especially when in New Zealand, though this had been our ideal all along, we had managed to achieve it in only one or two cases, and only then if the staff resigned themselves to becoming wardens.