"everything tastes better with cream": New Zealand architecture in the 1950s

Abstract

Philippa Mein Smith's reference to the official marketing advice that "everything tastes better with cream," reflected a 1950s' abundance: eggs and produce, full employment (for men), and the baby boom, which "boosted the market for children's toys and obliged fathers to build sandpits to encourage creative toddler play." In professional architecture, a confident modernism of curtain walling, air conditioning and prefabrication might have looked, on the surface, to have been counter to a cream-laden Pavlovian mentality, but there appears to be no shyness regarding construction innovation and technological advancement.