The ANZAC Alliance between Australia and New Zealand is now further memorialised in the new Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington. Sited directly opposite New Zealand’s National War Memorial the Australian memorial, which presents as a grove of red sandstone columns, forms an appropriate counterpoint to the singularity of the striking Carillon tower. Between them lies the newly created ANZAC Square.

The memorial creates a strong sense of place amongst the distinctive sandstone blocks encouraging visitors to move between them and take time to dwell on the various inscriptions contained within their black granite insets. These bear the names of the principal theatres and operations in which Australian and New Zealand forces served alongside one another. The red ‘shadows’ of the blocks are particularly effective in claiming this otherwise grey bluestone dressed piece of kiwi ground.

It cannot go unchallenged that the visual promise of Australia’s’ distinctive red centre gorge landscape, underpinned by the choice of a red stone, is not what it seems. It is not of its place but in fact Indian sandstone. Given the gravity of the memorial’s significance in commemorating historic events of great cultural importance to both sides of the Tasman, a greater emphasis on material integrity would have been preferred.

Most commendable is the success with which the architects’ intervention successfully accommodates the formal and informal, the reverential and the everyday in its contribution to city making now embedded in New Zealand’s capital.