Detailing in the mall ranges from very good to indifferent, with perhaps the most obvious example – certainly the most talked about – being the water mobile.

It consists of a series of vertically arranged free-swinging yellow buckets increasing in size from top to bottom. Water pours somewhat inelegantly from a sphere at the top through four hoses to the top buckets which, when full, tip their contents into the ones below and so on down the line, the bottom bucket emptying into the surrounding pool. Or so at least in theory.

In practice, the system works rather more erratically, with sporadic and sudden cascades of water often missing the bucket below, or hitting as it swings upside down, with resulting large splashes onto the pavement and roars of laughter from onlookers.

Indeed astonishment and hilarity are the most common reactions to the mobile, which is perhaps not a bad thing, except that this was not entirely the intention of the designer.

A more serious criticism of the mobile relates to its impracticability in Wellington's renowned winds. Anything much more than a breeze (by Wellington's standards) carries the water from the hoses up the street before it reaches even the top buckets, enforcing hurried turning off of the water supply.

This excerpt is from a 1969 Designscape magazine article titled "Places for Pedestrians".