Congratulations to the Cox Street R.C. Webb Flats for winning this year's Enduring Architecture Award at the NZIA Canterbury Architecture Awards this week.
Designed by Warren & Mahoney and completed in 1974, shortly after their triumphal success with the Christchurch Town Hall two years earlier (also a winner of this year's Heritage Award), the Merivale flats display many of the hallmarks of Warren's design first shown in the Dorset Street Flats and refined thereafter in a succession of domestic and commercial buildings: raw concrete block, exposed timbers, negative detailing and a fanatical attention to interior fittings.
Here is the citation from the Awards panel:
This very precise block of four ‘flats’ (as was the term used in the old days) comprised of unpainted concrete blocks, 45-degree pitched metal roofs and painted timber joinery reassuringly maintain a striking street presence 46 years after they were built. The south elevation a masterclass of simple forms, with truthful proportions and elegant details that have only improved with time. The architecture is clearly domestic, but its brutal expression and austerity is almost commercial, prefacing the architects’ later contributions to that class. It is this legacy that has elevated these houses beyond the norm and put them firmly on the map for architecture enthusiasts.
The link to watch the virtual awards ceremony is here.
Designed by Warren & Mahoney and completed in 1974, shortly after their triumphal success with the Christchurch Town Hall two years earlier (also a winner of this year's Heritage Award), the Merivale flats display many of the hallmarks of Warren's design first shown in the Dorset Street Flats and refined thereafter in a succession of domestic and commercial buildings: raw concrete block, exposed timbers, negative detailing and a fanatical attention to interior fittings.
Here is the citation from the Awards panel:
This very precise block of four ‘flats’ (as was the term used in the old days) comprised of unpainted concrete blocks, 45-degree pitched metal roofs and painted timber joinery reassuringly maintain a striking street presence 46 years after they were built. The south elevation a masterclass of simple forms, with truthful proportions and elegant details that have only improved with time. The architecture is clearly domestic, but its brutal expression and austerity is almost commercial, prefacing the architects’ later contributions to that class. It is this legacy that has elevated these houses beyond the norm and put them firmly on the map for architecture enthusiasts.
The link to watch the virtual awards ceremony is here.
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