Architectural History Aotearoa

"the need for beauty": New Zealand Interior and Landscape Architecture in the 1940s

Christine McCarthy — 2024-12-10

At the 1948 Arbor Day ceremony at Taita North School, Mr Polson "impressed upon the children the need for beauty in the world after the destruction and desolation of the recent war.ʺ As such he proposed that we could proactively make the world a better place. This decade in New Zealandʹs history of interior and landscape architectures was widely understood as a period of change and a desire to improve the world. Bill Toomath has described it as a time of "restrained transitional work,ʺ while Philippa Mein Smith refers to "a sequence of symbolic moves [that] indicated that the Dominion had become a nation.ʺ

From Field to Table: The Pukekohe Dehydration Factory in the 1940s

Cara Francesco — 2024-12-10

In August 1943, the New Zealand Governmentʹs Internal Marketing Division announced plans to construct a vegetable dehydration factory in Pukekohe, on the outskirts of southern Auckland. The factory was built with urgency, to dehydrate, quick‐freeze, can and cool store large quantities of vegetables to assist in providing food for United States troops, stationed in the Pacific. The factory consisted of a large, long main factory building, a boiler house and machine shop, a cafeteria, a chemical building, a vinery building, a
laboratory, and an administration block. It incorporated the most modern equipment and processing methods of the time, with much of the machinery supplied from the United States. To supply the large quantities of vegetables required under direction from the Department of Agriculture, produce was grown through a combination of state gardens and commercial market gardeners. To meet the demand, the factory operated long hours, becoming a significant local employer, particularly for women. Workers were also deployed from further afield to achieve the necessary processing outputs. This paper examines the development and operation of the Pukekohe Dehydration Factory in the 1940s, its role in supporting the war effort during the Second World War, and its utilisation throughout the remainder of the decade.

Centennial city: the City of Auckland model

Marguerite Hill — 2024-12-10

Auckland Council is lucky to care for the surviving portion of a city model made for the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition in 1940. The model represents a section of Auckland central, covering the area from Albert Park to Nelson Street, and Waitematā Harbour to what is now Aotea Square. The model was displayed in Dominion Court, one of a dozen models which represented New Zealand's main cities and towns. Fletchersʹ architects Ronald Muston and Lewis Walker were responsible for the design of Dominion Court and the interpretive models and dioramas within. Muston had a special interest in the models and even travelled to Hollywood to learn about current trends in movie model design and advertising techniques.

The ingenuity of the model makers included ships that ʺsailedʺ on the harbours, faux glow worms in the papier mâché Waitomo Caves, and a model of Aoraki/Mount Cook which was over 7.5m high. Thousands of wooden model buildings were made and hand‐painted by artists and technical college students and were based on aerial and street‐level photographs and specific colour palettes for each city. The model came to Auckland City Council after the exhibition closed and has been displayed inside and outside of council. It was recently conserved and is once again on public display.

"Ruffled by the number of windows": The 1948 Halberstam House by Henry Kulka

Cherie Jacobson — 2024-12-10

In March 1940 architect Henry Kulka arrived in New Zealand as a refugee of the Second World War. He had enjoyed a successful career in Vienna, including collaborations with his former teacher Adolf Loos. Kulkaʹs wife Hilda followed with the coupleʹs children a few weeks later and during her journey she met another refugee family, the Halberstams ‐ Hugo, Martha and their daughter Lucie. Eight years later Henry Kulka designed a house for a section the Halberstams had bought in Karori. In an oral history interview with Lucie, she recalled that once the house was completed, her parents invited people they had met while renting in Kelburn to visit their new home. The feedback received about the number of windows and the wood‐panelled living and dining room gave the distinct impression that their former neighbours felt they had built a house "above [their] social level.ʺ This paper looks at the reaction to the Halberstam House and similar houses built by émigré architects when they were completed. It concludes with the perspective of a current inhabitant ‐ how well does it suit contemporary living?.

A Street of Seedsmen: Plant Retailers in Victoria Avenue, Whanganui

Kate Jordan — 2024-12-10

In the 1940s, seedsmen, florists and other plant retailers were generally located on main streets of towns and cities. This paper looks at Whanganui as a case study of the relationships between plant retailers and the landscape, people and capital. The challenges of researching businesses and quantitative history are woven throughout.

Outside the Crazy House, New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, Wellington

Peter Wood — 2024-12-10

Writing on public buildings for the war time publication series Making New Zealand, Paul Pascoe described the Centennial Exhibition at Rongotai, Wellington, as displaying the degree of modernity that was then generally accepted and approved of by New Zealanders. An accompanying photograph (in all probability selected for inclusion by Pascoe's brother, John) shows Edmund Anscombe's Moderne tower building, and it is noted in the caption that the exhibition drew favourable comment from overseas visitors. At a moment in New Zealandʹs history when the heat of World War was once more accelerating, Anscombeʹs restrained stream‐lined modernism was met with approval. But not excitement. That reaction was reserved for Playland, the collection of amusement park attractions operating on the periphery of the exhibition grounds, and which, for many, offered the most compelling argument for attending. Of the varied offerings in Playland, the most popular attraction was The Crazy House where visitors were promised to encounter ‐ without warning! – innumerable diversions and never‐ending sources of mirth‐making. The Crazy House, like all elements of the Centennial Exhibition, was temporary, but unlike the latter, very little documentary of it remains. The few photographs of it present a modest façade with little hint of mirth, and of the interior of we have no descriptions at all. With reference to historic developments in entertainment attractions, this paper assembles what little information we have of The Crazy House to make a case for its significance as a defining development in New Zealand architecture. Just as the academic assurances of the Exhibition buildings would become a swansong to architectural stylism, The Crazy House would signal the appearance of demands on architecture that it now compete in an emergent field of international architecture called "popular entertainment.ʺ

"The sort of design sophistication we were all in need of," Ernst Plischke’s design for Paul’s Book Arcade (1949), Hamilton

Matt Grant — 2024-12-10

In 1949 a remarkable interior design for a Hamilton bookshop by Ernst Plischke was, according to the client, "the sort of design sophistication we were all in need of." Paul's Book Arcade played a pivotal role in Hamilton social circles in the 1940s, with the owner David Blackwood Paul (aka Blackwood) and his wife Janet Wilkinson, forming their own "centre of human enlightenment." The Blackwood group of friends included painter Margot Phillips, who like Plischke, was a European refugee, painter, critic, and a writer for The Listener, Geoff Fairburn and his wife Jean (also an artist), as well as writer Alexander Gaskell Pickard.

Paul's Book Arcade was established in Hamilton in 1901 by Blackwood's father William Henry Paul. In 1933, Blackwood took over the management of the bookshop, reportedly as the result of a disagreement with his father, who by then was a powerful community leader. Paul's local services were a more pressing concern, and so Blackwood inherited what was a "modest emporium" with the atmosphere of a general store. Blackwood would later transform Paul's Book Arcade to such an extent that in 1949 the visiting English publisher Sir Stanley Unwin numbered the bookshop among the fourteen best in the world, and one of the two best in New Zealand. So successful was the bookshop that in 1955 a further two stores were opened, each in Auckland. The first was located on Shortland Street, and the second on High Street, also designed by Plischke.

The Blackwood social circle would have a lasting and far‐reaching influence on the mid‐century architecture of Hamilton. Connections with local artists and groups such as the Waikato Society of Arts, allowed a seamless flow of European‐inspired modernist ideals to inform Hamilton's new architecture, interior design, and cultural landscape. The first built manifestation of this movement was the 1949 interior design for Paul's Book Arcade by Austrian architect Ernst Plischke. This presentation will look at the relation between Blackwood and Plischke, the architect's design for the Book Arcade, and how the Blackwood's informed design sensibilities would influence Hamilton's modernist landscape for years afterwards.

E.163 1945 "Emergency Standard Specification for Dwellinghouse Construction" – a forgotten ancestor

Nigel Isaacs — 2024-12-10

The outbreak of World War II led to a focus on the most efficient use of materials within New Zealand. In 1944 the New Zealand Standards Council was requested to develop an "Emergency Standard Specification for Dwellinghouse Construction." Unlike NZSS 95 "New Zealand Standard Model Building By‐Law" which was limited to structural stability, public health and other council‐controlled issues, this new specification (NZSS E.163) could deal with materials and construction methods. Published in January 1945, only two copies appear extant – a partial copy in Wellington City Archives and a full copy in Auckland City Archives, although the Committee minutes are held in Archives New Zealand.

As well as dealing with house construction (foundations, concrete work, carpentry, etc.) it deals with internal finishing (solid‐ and fibrous‐plaster, terrazzo, painting and paperhanging, etc.) and services (plumbing, drainage and electrical). E.163 was promoted as being of real benefit to occupants (owners or tenants) as they could be assured as to "essential considerations relating to materials, workmanship, and design" – placing quality, not speed at the heart of the then Government's actions. The paper compares the requirements of E.163 with the relevant parts of NZSS95, as well as exploring its relationship to NZS 3604 "Code of Practice for Light Timber Frame Buildings Not Requiring Specific Design" and modern model specifications.

Zig-zags, maples, and "[t]he pitfalls of façade first design": inside University House on Bowen Street, Wellington

Christine McCarthy — 2024-12-10

This paper examines the design origins and interior of the now demolished University House (Prouse and Wilson, 1940‐41), also known as the University Senate Building and the University Grants Committee Building.

Appendix A: William John Dewitt Prouse (1877-1956): Biography

Christine McCarthy — 2024-12-10

This appendix provides background material on William Prouse of Prouse and Wilson up to the time the University Senate Building was designed. The factual record suggests Prouse's life was experientially rich and unusual. He was a talented musician married to an even more talented musician, who travelled the world. He held partnerships in a string of significant architectural firms in early‐twentieth‐century New Zealand, and shareholdings in building development companies and in what appears to be pioneering ventures in motor camps in the Wellington region. 1940 was not only significant as the year that saw the design of the University Senate building ‐ but it was also the year that his wife Ava died. Helliwell states that c1941, Prouse was "feeling the advance of age and did little at the office," suggesting that his involvement in architecture lessened from this time.

Making New Zealand: Celebration and Anti-Myth

Michael Dudding — 2024-12-10

The Making New Zealand publications were a New Zealand government‐produced series of magazines to celebrate the centenary of the 1840 signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Each issue of the series (covering topics from infrastructure and defence, to fashion and sport) was to present an objective overview of the history of its subject – within the confines of a publication commemorating New Zealand's history. Joe Heenan, Undersecretary of Internal Affairs, was keen for the centenary celebrations and ephemera to "celebrate 100 years of colonisation," bringing "the bright side of our national progress" before the eyes of the world. While some authors were happy to articulate their topics in support of Heenan's vision, others became interested in producing what they believed to be a more realistic narrative grounded in the social realities of this country, including its negative aspects. Rather than making a case for the maintenance of cultural continuity, these writers sought a national identity arising from cultural adaptation to the specific conditions of New Zealand as a new world. This paper looks at a range of Making New Zealand issues to explore the narratives put forward as retrospective accounts of and normative directives for the design of New Zealand's interior and landscape environments.