‘90s Baby! Studying in the Wellington of the ‘90s

Zia Ravenscroft

There are a handful of moments from my first few years at university that I consider quintessential student experiences. Taking the equivalent of five coffees to the library in a drink bottle to write an essay in one sitting. Sneaking vodka into bars in bottles of hand sanitiser and micellar water. The RAs shutting down every halls-confession page. My theatre lecturer making us promise that no matter how late we stayed in Studio 77 painting our set, we would not sleep there overnight. Going to the Botanic Gardens to drink nearly every weekend in first year, looking down at the harbour through soju-blurry eyes. Wellington didn’t quite feel like home yet, but I knew it would be. 

But what about being a student in Wellington thirty years ago? Before the internet, before looking at the job market and deciding that an Honours year was preferable, before the Student Union building and Te Aro campus had even been built. Was life simpler? Was life better? I don’t have the answers. Luckily, I am a dedicated research student and know someone who does: my mum. 

My mother, Pam, was a student from 1991–1995. Her first year was at Massey University in Palmerston North, where she met my dad, before she moved to Wellington to complete her Bachelor of Building Science and Bachelor of Architecture degrees. It was a lot busier than the Manawatū, and still is. Pam remembers being amazed that some cafés were still open in the evening, a sentiment I shared thirty years later.

In 1992, Pam lived in Everton Hall and is still friends with Nicola, one of her flatmates from that year. I was in Everton in my second year too, and we could see Pam’s old flat from my lounge window when she helped me move in. She would take over the dining table for her big architecture drawings and barely went to any of the social events the hall offered because she was so busy with coursework. I rearranged the sofas to create more floor space for theatre rehearsals and regularly broke the rules about guests staying overnight. My best friend visiting from Auckland slept on my couch for over a week when his Grindr daddy cancelled on him. If the RAs didn’t notice, that’s on them. I ran my heater non-stop because we paid a flat $15 a week for power. There was an electricity shortage in ‘92 due to the hydro lakes running low, and Pam got chilblains that winter. No chilblains for me, but I did get strep throat and tonsillitis in my Everton winter from an unfortunate dalliance in the Ivy disabled bathroom, which is basically the same thing. 

In her third year, Pam moved to the glamorous Durham Street in the equally glamorous Aro Valley. She describes this as a ‘typical student flat,’ with cockroaches coming out of the sink drain and no vacuum cleaner because her other flatmates had lent it to a friend and never bothered to get it back. Those flatmates were older musicians who were never home, and she left halfway through the year because she didn’t want to feel like she was flatting by herself. Despite the cockroaches and absent flatmates, she could hear ruru every night and watch lizards in the garden. There was a sunroom where she put her first drawing board. There wasn’t enough space in the old architecture school—Studio 77, before the theatre kids moved in—for everyone to have their own drawing board, so a lot of students worked from home. 

Her next flat was further up Aro Valley, and even more of a dive. When Pam moved in, she realised she’d been to parties there before, as it was ‘fairly notorious.’ The hot water in the bath didn’t work and there was no shower, so you had to crouch under a trickle of cold water even in winter. There were mice in the kitchen and no light in the toilet. My first official flat in Hataitai, which saw me through the next half of my BA, wasn’t quite as bad as these, thankfully. We just had one bedroom that was too small to be legally counted as one, walls thin enough to hear our neighbours loudly playing Pink Floyd every time they got high, and a fire escape with half a railing we lovingly called our balcony. 

My new-since-January flat in Berhampore was built in 1900 and very obviously redecorated in the ‘70s. The orange-and-brown floral wallpaper in the lounge is a bit of a giveaway. The electrician who reconnected us when we moved in burst out laughing when I opened the door and told me he used to go to crazy parties here last century. Pam moved into an apartment at the top of Abel Smith Street for her last two years of uni. The building is still there and a very boring shade of grey now, but it was bright pink in my mum’s time there. Her two flatmates, who shared the last Aro Valley flat, moved in over summer and chose their bedrooms first. Pam was stuck with one that had a window opening onto the roof deck anybody in the building had access to, and there would be a bunch of people outside her window when there were parties. She got the landlord special once: when there was mould on the ceilings, so the landlord came in to spray them. He got the spray all over a beautiful new dress Pam had bought with prize money from an architecture competition. 

Architecture was ‘all-consuming’ and insular to study, with full workloads and long hours. A more typically rowdy student experience doesn’t really apply to my mum, which is funny because the hardest partiers I’ve known have been architecture students. Pam carried her big drawings and models up and down from Everton or Aro Valley to Fairlie Terrace, worried the wind would blow her drawing folder away, but didn’t study much at Studio 77 because there was such limited space. The Te Aro campus opened at the start of her fourth year, and it was ‘amazing to be the first cohort studying there.’ Everything was brand new, from the dedicated architecture library and printing room to the common room and a studio finally big enough for everyone to have their own drawing board. Crits—the design critiques at the end of a course—were terrifying. The Student Union building was also built during my mum’s time at Vic, and she remembers all the architecture students thought the glass atrium was really cool. I mostly think it’s far too hot in summer. It was designed by famous Wellingtonian architect Ian Athfield, whose son was in Pam’s class.

There were about fifty people in Pam’s year, and gossip spread fast in such a small course. A popular lecturer and one of his tutors were seen kissing once in the Botanic Gardens, and the news went around arch school in about ten minutes. Only ten or fifteen people in her course were women. She describes this group of women as wonderfully close and supportive, and they were called ‘the witches’ by the men in her classes. They would take over the common room to have potluck lunches, which pissed off the guys, and put all their drawing boards next to each other. The gender divide was noticeable and the programme was ‘very much a boys’ club.’ The figure of the architect was always thought of as one white man, or ‘stale pale male,’ as Pam has said my entire life.

The women in her course were doing a lot of collaborative work, which was really groundbreaking for architecture school. Collaboration is more like real life than individual coursework; unless you’re a solo practitioner, architecture is about teamwork and everyone playing a role. Wanting to take sole credit for a project instead of acknowledging everyone’s unique contribution felt too hierarchical, and like a particularly male phenomenon. In her last year, Pam and her friend Rebecca did their final design project together, which was also a nationwide competition where they placed second. This was only the second time a collaboration had placed, and the first time more than one woman had placed. 

My mum has always been interested in feminism and gender studies, and I feel extremely grateful for the knowledge and perspective she raised me with. Her final research project, similar to an Honours-level thesis, was an exploration of the underrepresentation and ‘slippages’ of women in famous architectural pairs, and what a truly feminist architecture that disrupted patriarchal norms could look like. 

Once a week, the ‘witches’ went to a café on Cuba Street and shared a few $5 seafood pizzas for lunch in between their long studio hours. Some of their classmates lived in huge warehouses they’d fitted out themselves and would host class dinner parties at a huge dining table. Pam’s drink of choice was cask wine because a box would last her ages. My drink of choice in first year was a potion consisting of cheap moscato, mystery-flavoured Nitro, and plain soju. I swear I’m a classy G&T or white wine guy now. My mum says she didn’t have much spare money, which is all too relatable. Her weekly allowance just covered her rent and essentials. Being in a long-distance relationship (which I have luckily managed to avoid the last four years) also affected what little spare time and money she had. My dad was in Palmerston North or Auckland during these years, so every second weekend Pam would go back to Palmy to see him and her family, or he would come to Wellington to see her. 

A highlight of the social calendar was the elaborately themed Architecture balls. When the Te Aro campus opened, the theme was ‘unveiling’ and the ball was held in the atrium. Pam borrowed her flatmate’s black velvet curtains and draped them around herself. The next one was space-themed, so she bought silver quilted material and made a space-age minidress. As a drag performer, there is nothing I hold more sacred than a good Pete’s Emporium trip. Pam went from wearing all black in high school to making a lot of her own short dresses to wear with leggings, with screenprinted designs in lime green and orange. She remembers a pair of green suede shoes she wore all the time, as well as a pair of brown leather boots. She liked the boots because they were a little different: handmade, from a shop on Cuba Street, and not Docs, which everyone else wore. I have my own iconic pairs of shoes I cherish, from star-patterned knee-high sneakers to a pair of tall leather boots I got for $5 from an op-shop in Karori. 

She listened mostly to alternative music, including The Cure and Sonic Youth, and saw the latter live at St James Theatre once. She inherited my dad’s record player and collection when he got a flash new CD player. Everyone used to watch Shortland Street when it first aired. My studies, meanwhile, have been soundtracked by new albums from Ethel Cain, Rina Sawayama, Lady Gaga, and Slayyyter. I’ve held movie nights for classics such as Sharknado, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, and Morbius (as well as genuinely critically acclaimed movies, I promise). There was a concrete wall in Aro Valley with ‘ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS MY DARLING’ graffitied onto it because Absolutely Fabulous was hugely popular. Pam remembers her mum picking her up from the train station in Palmy once and saying there’s this new TV show she had to watch about a terrible mother. 

Was studying in the ‘90s absolutely fabulous? Probably not. Life was still expensive and students were still stressed, although not to the extent we are now about the various crises the world is in. Pam spent a summer as a research assistant for Victoria’s first green architecture course, and said they were really thinking about climate change and the environment even then. I’m perhaps not quite as disciplined of a student as my mother was, and I’m not sure if she ever stayed at a party late enough to hear the birds singing like I have. I find it motivating that getting a degree—and surviving this city—runs in the family. If my mum did this shit thirty years ago, so can I.