Architectural History Aotearoa

"... about as austere as a Dior gown ...": New Zealand architecture in the 1960s

2021-01-12T00:55:45+00:00

Peter Middleton's 1964 description of Hoogerburg Scott's Futuna Chapel (1958-1960) as being "about as austere as a Dior gown and as comforting as a hair shirt ... [but] at least it's a meaningful statement" points to a sense of complexity and contradiction present in the architecture of the 1960s. The decade which began with Futuna's completion, ends shortly after its recognition with an NZIA Gold Medal Award in 1968. The significance of the building weaves through the full length of the decade.

A Final Formality: Three Modernist Pavilion Houses of the early 1960s

2021-01-12T01:00:27+00:00

The Beard, Alington, and Mackay houses represent the endpoint of a direction in New Zealand domestic architecture that was both internationalist and based within the realities of local house building in the mid-twentieth century. Imi Porsolt, while reviewing Stephanie Bonny and Marilyn Reynolds'book Living with 50 Architects in 1980, specifically points to the Alington house as the final formalisation of this purist trend. Porsolt's review provides an historical subtext to Living with 50 Architects that opposes the "altogether austere style" of the pavilion with the vernacularism of what is best described as the "elegant shed" tradition of New Zealand house design. More elegant than the elegant shed, these pavilions reveal something of a "blind spot" in New Zealand's architectural history – aside from the inclusion of the Beard and Alington houses in Living with 50 Architects,they have not appeared in any of the canon-forming historical surveys such as Mitchell and Chaplin's The Elegant Shed or Shaw's A History of New Zealand Architecture. The Mackay house also has not featured until its recent appearance in Lloyd Jenkins' At Home: A Century of New Zealand Design. This paper uses Porsolt's view as a useful starting point from which to consider the relationship that exists between the Beard, Alington, and Mackay houses, and their place in the development of New Zealand's domestic architecture during the 1960s.

Constructing Education: 1961-69

2021-01-12T01:07:42+00:00

The 1960s were a time of great change and growth in New Zealand's tertiary eduction sector, and the university-based discipline of architecture was in no way exempt from this progress. In response to the Parry Report of 1959-1960, the New Zealand government passed the 1961 Universities Act, which dissolved the federated University of New Zealand. This Act opened the way for the independence of the four universities of Auckland, Victoria, Canterbury and Otago, and the two allied agricultural colleges of Massey and Lincoln. Under the federated university system, Auckland University College had been the centre of architectural training, and had delivered extramural course through colleges in the other centres. As the "disproportionate number" of extramural and part-time study had been criticisms levelled by the Parry Report, it was obvious that another School of Architecture would now be required, but where? Ever an argumentative association, members of the New Zealand Institute of Architects engaged in a lively debate on the choice, positing Victoria University in Wellington, and Canterbury University in Christchurch, as the major contenders. By the end of the decade university-based architectural training would expand at both Auckland and (the new) Wellington Schools, New Zealand's first PhD in Architecture would be conferred on Dr John Dickson, and many of the careers of architects and architectural academics who went on to construct the discipline as it is today, had begun.

Unbuilt Sixties: The Unsuccessful Entries in the Christchurch Town Hall Competition

2021-01-12T01:23:09+00:00

The completion of the Christchurch Town Hall in 1972 marked the end of a process which had begun in 1964 with a national competition, the largest and most prestigious of the post-war era in New Zealand and one of the major architectural events of the 1960s. Although Warren and Mahoney's winning design has assumed a prominent place in New Zealand architecture, unsuccessful designs by among others, Pascoe & Linton; Lawry & Sellars; Austin, Dixon & Pepper; Gabites & Beard and Thorpe, Cutter, Pickmere, Douglas & Partners, are virtually forgotten. These designs deserve to be better known since they offer an invaluable insight into the range of architectural approaches being employed during the mid sixties. Standing apart from the short listed designs is Peter Beaven's more widely published entry, which was singled out by the jury as being especially meritorious. The paper will examine unrealised designs for the Christchurch Town Hall in the context of contemporary attitudes towards concert hall and civic centre design. Approaches ranged from the Miesian international modernism of Lawry and Sellars to the sculptural forms of Beaven's proposal in which influences as diverse as Aalto, Scharoun and Mountfort are strikingly integrated. The paper will also assess Warren and Mahoney's unbuilt civic centre design within the framework of the competition entries as a whole. Such unbuilt designs constitute an important, but largely invisible part of the architecture of the 1960s and deserve to be re-inscribed within in the history of the period.

No free love: the dearth of media output from the Architectural Centre in the swinging sixties

2024-04-30T19:55:20+00:00

The Architectural Centre, having made a powerful impact on the design profession in New Zealand in the '40s and '50s, appears to have taken a back seat in the 1960s. Were the drug-crazed psychedelic sixties to blame, or was there still signs of life behind the closed doors? No longer publishing Design Review, the Centre continued to work on projects, mainly behind the scenes, such as the campaign for better town planning in Wellington. The effort that went into this campaign may have led to the Centre having "sucked its bottle dry" and an almost stagnation at times during the 1960s, but in the end achieved its aim with the publication by Wellington's Council of a Town Plan, and the creation of a Town Planning department within the Council. This paper follows the actions of the Centre throughout its "mute" decade, and exposes its continuing influence on the City, on subject matter that is still being discussed today, via the publication of a special supplement in the Dominion, a publishing coup that is unparalleled today.

Going for Gold: New Zealand houses in the 60s through the veil of the NZIA Bronze Medals

2024-04-30T20:02:34+00:00

In 1926 the New Zealand Institute of Architects instituted a Gold, Silver, Bronze Medal system to recognise its members' work. By the 1960s, the Bronze Medal recognised the best designed single-unit house. The award system appears to have been a strict one, the Institute feeling no obligation to award the Bronze Medal in 1962, 1964 and 1969. This paper looks at the seven houses recognised by the Bronze Award in the 1960s.

Innovation in Christchurch Church Architecture

2024-04-30T20:08:16+00:00

Several church buildings erected in Christchurch in the 1960s signalled significant departures in the city's established traditions of church architecture. They included three Roman Catholic parish churches – St Matthew's Bryndwr, Our Lady of Victories, Sockburn, and St Anne's, Woolston. This paper focuses on the most innovative and striking of these three churches, Our Lady of Victories, Sockburn. It sets the building in the broader context of post-war church architecture in Christchurch. Innovation in Christchurch church architecture had begun in the 1950s with a number of brick churches, but significant departures from established church building forms did not occur until the 1960s. Our Lady of Victories reflected with particular drama the impact on church architecture of the changes in Roman Catholic liturgy associated with the Second Vatican Council. The paper describes the process through which the radically new design emerged, paying particular attention to the interaction between the architect, C.R. Thomas, and the new Roman Catholic Bishop of Christchurch, Brian Ashby. The paper also sets the design of the church in the context of New Zealand, and international, architectural trends in the late 1950s and 1960s.

"Picture This": Advertising and Image in the New Zealand Architectural Journals in 1965

2021-01-12T01:47:40+00:00

Throughout the 1960s advertising content in New Zealand's two leading architectural journals increased dramatically. In the case of the NZIA Journal, what was a staid professional publication without advertising in the 1950s, by the end of the 1960s carried significant advertising material including advertorial covers and the first colour centre pages. While not changing so dramatically, Home and Building nonetheless significantly increased the visibility of its advertising content over the same period. This research presents the findings of a comparative analysis of commercial advertising imagery found in the pages of Home & Building and the NZIA Journal for 1965. Throughout the 1960s the dominant publications dedicated to the activities of architects and architecture in New Zealand were the periodicals Home & Building and the NZIA Journal. From the point of view of advertisers it is important to emphasise that these periodicals were not market competitors. While the NZIA Journal was a professional journal published by the New Zealand Institute of Architects, Home & Building was published under the auspices of the NZIA, and consequentially the content differences between the two reflects a conscious effort on the part of the NZIA to distinguish between two different readerships. To a large extent this is reflected in the advertisements contained in each. The NZIA Journal shows an appeal on the part of the advertisers to architects as building professionals with its bias towards products and systems of construction. By contrast Home & Building advertising content tends to be directed towards a client market with a marked appeal to spaces of occupancy. This is exactly what we might expect to find; the professional journal directed to the work of the architect, and the more populous one appealing to potential clients. Consequentially much of the advertising content reflects this distinction. However what is less clear is the degree to which the advertising content either followed or directed this ideological editorial difference.In making a comparative analysis of the advertising material found in the pages of these two dominant forums attention has been given to the manner in which advertisers may have actively contributed to redefining the roles and responsibilities of "architect" and "client" during this period of 1960-70. I suggest that the NZIA may have had less control than it might have imagin ed over the nature of influence its two premiere publications were having on New Zealand architects and architecture in the 1960s.