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The Gift that Goes on Giving? Frank Ponder’s Hurricane Housing for Niue

Abstract The paper looks at a specific period in Niue after two devastating cyclones struck the island and rendered almost all of the population (about 4700) homeless in 1959 and 1960. The New Zealand Government set about an ambitious plan to build up to 750 new houses. A variety of techniques were proposed to make the project economically feasible, which included the maximum use of local materials and local labour, the provision of grants and suspensory loans as well as low-interest loans. Frank Ponder, from the New Zealand Ministry of Works, was the first visitor to the Island following the cyclones and a key figure in the design of the houses and their realisation. The paper attempts to chart the project in the context of functionalism and modernist pretexts for building in the tropics. What might the design of the houses tell us about the political, cultural and economic discourse unfolding at the time? Fifty years later these houses have succumbed to a number of subsequent conditions and appear to still have a story to tell. Inexorable population decline sees many houses abandoned but unforeseen consequences of material choices make their removal, renewal and legacy awkward still.