New Zealand Parliament Buildings

The New Zealand Parliament Buildings occupy a complex in central Wellington, its most distinctive structure, the Executive Wing, popularly known as the Beehive for its rounded, tiered shape, completed in stages between 1969 and 1981 to a design by the British architect Basil Spence. Spence reportedly sketched the building's distinctive stepped, conical form during an initial 1964 visit, and the completed building's concentric rings of offices, narrowing toward its rooftop cabinet room, give it a silhouette unlike almost any other legislative building in the world. The Beehive stands alongside the older Edwardian Neoclassical Parliament House, completed in 1922, and the Victorian Gothic Parliamentary Library, the three buildings together forming the seat of the New Zealand Parliament despite their markedly different architectural styles. The Beehive's design proved controversial among architectural critics in New Zealand for decades after its completion, though it has since become one of the country's most recognized civic landmarks and a common shorthand reference for the New Zealand government itself.