Interior designer Campbell Johnson displays his design skills, furnishing and styling the Dorset Street Flat he purchased (and now occupies) in 2023.
An interior designer at home in the Dorset Street Flats
When interior designer, Campbell Johnson, returned to New Zealand after a decade of living in Italy, one thing was certain: he had a new appreciation for living in small spaces. Combine that with his love of mid-century architecture and the timely marketing of one of Sir Miles Warren’s Dorset Street Flats for sale, and the result is something truly special.
It was 2023 when Campbell purchased one of the flats at auction. The year before, an extensive strengthening and restoration project, designed by Young Architects, had been completed, and the eight units were all inhabited again following the earthquakes.
In 2010, the building, which was designed and built between 1956 and 1957, received a Category 1 Historic Place listing and was noted by Heritage New Zealand as representing “the emergence of a new kind of residential living in New Zealand, that is, a small-scale group of purpose-designed, modern, modest-sized one-bedroom city flats for minimal living”, and being “amongst the most important domestic buildings built in New Zealand in the second half of the twentieth century. Miles Warren designed them as a young architect and with these flats launched an architectural vocabulary that would come to distinguish the ‘Christchurch School’ of post-war architecture and also helped to shape the modernist architectural design nationally for over two decades.”
With a decade of complete immersion in Italian and European architecture and design behind him, and the immense legacy of this building to consider, it was a careful approach that defined Campbell’s plan here — one that would gently integrate many ideas that spanned era and influence.
Campbell describes his style, both in life and as a designer, as ordered and eclectic; here, as in many of his other projects, the design’s success is evident in its balanced yet conflicting nuances.
His goal with every project, he tells us, is to create a certain harmony — one he often achieves by blending pieces of markedly different styles to create compelling spaces that deliver something a little different; they’re worldly, bold, and beautifully considered.
In the case of his new home, it was this ethos that underpinned the project from the outset. There were limitations to what could be achieved, due to both the constrained size of the property and the heritage requirements that apply to both exterior and interior elements.
“The flat has been one of the hardest spaces I’ve ever had to configure due to its size of approximately 37 square metres. Despite the tiny proportions, I wanted to clearly define different areas of living, so I was careful to curate the right pieces that achieve this spatially but that also pay homage to the beauty of the architecture,” Campbell explains.
Campbell describes the flat’s proportions as “almost like living in an oversized hotel room or studio”, yet he has delivered something dramatic and intriguing that doesn’t seek to overwhelm the original features.
“It’s a special building and the units don’t often come up for sale, so I was incredibly lucky to be able to secure this one. Before I left to live in Europe, I had owned and lived in a couple of Peter Beaven apartments, and my grandfather built the Christchurch Town Hall, also designed by Miles Warren [and Maurice Mahoney], so the Dorset Street Flats appealed to me both aesthetically and architecturally.”
The connection Campbell felt with the building translates through to every aspect of the interiors he has crafted. His is a ground-level unit with a courtyard. Here, some planting had been done by the previous owner and Campbell explains, “I introduced some more ordered elements like Buxus hedging, along with jasmine. I also managed to find a 20-year-old cloud tree, which I’ve got in a galvanised steel pot that emulates the planters at the main building entry.”
A kinetic Corten steel sculpture composed of four blocks, by Christchurch sculptor Matthew Williams, was installed on the lawn. Campbell says he liked the piece because of the “way the individual cubes sit together and connect, in the same way each unit in the flats [is] part of an overall architectural entity yet each has its own subtle differences”.
A Kartell table and chairs grace the paved patio, while a black and white Fatboy parasol provides all-important summer shade in the north-facing garden.
“It’s quite restrained, with a couple of little accents in a blush-pink Martino Gamper stool and a red Emma Fox chair.”
Step inside, and the perfectly curated experience continues. The kitchen had already been restored.
“All I did in there, really, was add my Rocket coffee machine. An induction hob and dishwasher had been carefully integrated, so you still have the real essence of the original kitchen.
“The whole project was one of careful decoration rather than design. There’s an intense juxtaposition of materials, and I didn’t want to obstruct what’s there, so it was about applying objects.”
In the living room, Campbell has added black velvet (Barcelona Onyx) drapes, which introduce a softness while recessing into the space. Sheer curtains behind help to temper the northern sun.
“They’re both from James Dunlop; the sheer curtains (Attica Ash) are an off grey with a subtle ’50s-esque pattern.”
A 1970s bench seat sits against the window, while an antique sideboard introduces an entirely different character. A George Nelson light was already there, and a new addition to the space is a red Verner Panton Flowerpot pendant that hangs over a Platner dining table from Studio Italia. Dining chairs include a Panton chair and an Eames Aluminium Group chair. The front door opens immediately into the dining space so Campbell has added another black velvet curtain to mask the door for cosiness when dining.
The lounge space, although confined, offers a variety of seating options, moving from the bench seat to a Ghost Chair and an Art Deco settee Campbell inherited from his grandmother, which he had reupholstered in black velvet.
“Miles Warren’s furniture style was very eclectic. As far as I know, his next residence after Dorset Street was 65 Cambridge Terrace, where he designed his home and office together. I love seeing how he furnished the spaces with such an eclectic mix of goodies — this is also my aesthetic, so the pieces I’ve chosen feel fitting in this context. I’ve blended antique, mid-century, and contemporary.”
The original timber bookshelf is protected under the Heritage listing, and Campbell initially considered a directional light to illuminate it. In the end, he decided to line it carefully with mirrors to provide reflection in the space and draw attention to the beauty of the original craftsmanship.
Like the rest of the unit, the bedroom is very small. The decision to incorporate a queen-sized bed was one Campbell deliberated on.
“You can just shuffle around it but it’s worth it. The new board-form concrete wall is actually very warm, and I’ve echoed that warmth in the grey velvet headboard. Black velvet and white bedding from Wallace Cotton keeps the colour palette consistent.”
A Kartell lamp sits on a Componibili side table, and an Amp Lamp pendant from Normann Copenhagen provides another layer to the subtle lighting scheme.
As for how it feels to live in this historic space, Campbell describes it as being within a sense of unity where “everything feels like it sits happily together. It feels harmonious. In winter, it’s one of the warmest houses I’ve ever lived in thanks to the underfloor heating and double glazing that was installed as part of the restoration. In summer, with the timber ranch sliders open onto the courtyard, you have an extra living space.
“Although I initially had some trepidation about the size of it, and elements like the communal laundry, I’ve come to enjoy it; you actually talk to your neighbours and there’s a sense of community. It has a special feeling, this place.”
Words: Clare Chapman. Images: Ryan Thorpe
“Home”, Issue 515, Dec/Jan 2025, pp.78-82.
https://homemagazine.nz/an-interior-designer-makes-a-home-in-one-of-the-dorset-street-flats/
Reproduced with the permission of the publisher.
An interior designer at home in the Dorset Street Flats
When interior designer, Campbell Johnson, returned to New Zealand after a decade of living in Italy, one thing was certain: he had a new appreciation for living in small spaces. Combine that with his love of mid-century architecture and the timely marketing of one of Sir Miles Warren’s Dorset Street Flats for sale, and the result is something truly special.
It was 2023 when Campbell purchased one of the flats at auction. The year before, an extensive strengthening and restoration project, designed by Young Architects, had been completed, and the eight units were all inhabited again following the earthquakes.
In 2010, the building, which was designed and built between 1956 and 1957, received a Category 1 Historic Place listing and was noted by Heritage New Zealand as representing “the emergence of a new kind of residential living in New Zealand, that is, a small-scale group of purpose-designed, modern, modest-sized one-bedroom city flats for minimal living”, and being “amongst the most important domestic buildings built in New Zealand in the second half of the twentieth century. Miles Warren designed them as a young architect and with these flats launched an architectural vocabulary that would come to distinguish the ‘Christchurch School’ of post-war architecture and also helped to shape the modernist architectural design nationally for over two decades.”
With a decade of complete immersion in Italian and European architecture and design behind him, and the immense legacy of this building to consider, it was a careful approach that defined Campbell’s plan here — one that would gently integrate many ideas that spanned era and influence.
Campbell describes his style, both in life and as a designer, as ordered and eclectic; here, as in many of his other projects, the design’s success is evident in its balanced yet conflicting nuances.
His goal with every project, he tells us, is to create a certain harmony — one he often achieves by blending pieces of markedly different styles to create compelling spaces that deliver something a little different; they’re worldly, bold, and beautifully considered.
In the case of his new home, it was this ethos that underpinned the project from the outset. There were limitations to what could be achieved, due to both the constrained size of the property and the heritage requirements that apply to both exterior and interior elements.
“The flat has been one of the hardest spaces I’ve ever had to configure due to its size of approximately 37 square metres. Despite the tiny proportions, I wanted to clearly define different areas of living, so I was careful to curate the right pieces that achieve this spatially but that also pay homage to the beauty of the architecture,” Campbell explains.
Campbell describes the flat’s proportions as “almost like living in an oversized hotel room or studio”, yet he has delivered something dramatic and intriguing that doesn’t seek to overwhelm the original features.
“It’s a special building and the units don’t often come up for sale, so I was incredibly lucky to be able to secure this one. Before I left to live in Europe, I had owned and lived in a couple of Peter Beaven apartments, and my grandfather built the Christchurch Town Hall, also designed by Miles Warren [and Maurice Mahoney], so the Dorset Street Flats appealed to me both aesthetically and architecturally.”
The connection Campbell felt with the building translates through to every aspect of the interiors he has crafted. His is a ground-level unit with a courtyard. Here, some planting had been done by the previous owner and Campbell explains, “I introduced some more ordered elements like Buxus hedging, along with jasmine. I also managed to find a 20-year-old cloud tree, which I’ve got in a galvanised steel pot that emulates the planters at the main building entry.”
A kinetic Corten steel sculpture composed of four blocks, by Christchurch sculptor Matthew Williams, was installed on the lawn. Campbell says he liked the piece because of the “way the individual cubes sit together and connect, in the same way each unit in the flats [is] part of an overall architectural entity yet each has its own subtle differences”.
A Kartell table and chairs grace the paved patio, while a black and white Fatboy parasol provides all-important summer shade in the north-facing garden.
“It’s quite restrained, with a couple of little accents in a blush-pink Martino Gamper stool and a red Emma Fox chair.”
Step inside, and the perfectly curated experience continues. The kitchen had already been restored.
“All I did in there, really, was add my Rocket coffee machine. An induction hob and dishwasher had been carefully integrated, so you still have the real essence of the original kitchen.
“The whole project was one of careful decoration rather than design. There’s an intense juxtaposition of materials, and I didn’t want to obstruct what’s there, so it was about applying objects.”
In the living room, Campbell has added black velvet (Barcelona Onyx) drapes, which introduce a softness while recessing into the space. Sheer curtains behind help to temper the northern sun.
“They’re both from James Dunlop; the sheer curtains (Attica Ash) are an off grey with a subtle ’50s-esque pattern.”
A 1970s bench seat sits against the window, while an antique sideboard introduces an entirely different character. A George Nelson light was already there, and a new addition to the space is a red Verner Panton Flowerpot pendant that hangs over a Platner dining table from Studio Italia. Dining chairs include a Panton chair and an Eames Aluminium Group chair. The front door opens immediately into the dining space so Campbell has added another black velvet curtain to mask the door for cosiness when dining.
The lounge space, although confined, offers a variety of seating options, moving from the bench seat to a Ghost Chair and an Art Deco settee Campbell inherited from his grandmother, which he had reupholstered in black velvet.
“Miles Warren’s furniture style was very eclectic. As far as I know, his next residence after Dorset Street was 65 Cambridge Terrace, where he designed his home and office together. I love seeing how he furnished the spaces with such an eclectic mix of goodies — this is also my aesthetic, so the pieces I’ve chosen feel fitting in this context. I’ve blended antique, mid-century, and contemporary.”
The original timber bookshelf is protected under the Heritage listing, and Campbell initially considered a directional light to illuminate it. In the end, he decided to line it carefully with mirrors to provide reflection in the space and draw attention to the beauty of the original craftsmanship.
Like the rest of the unit, the bedroom is very small. The decision to incorporate a queen-sized bed was one Campbell deliberated on.
“You can just shuffle around it but it’s worth it. The new board-form concrete wall is actually very warm, and I’ve echoed that warmth in the grey velvet headboard. Black velvet and white bedding from Wallace Cotton keeps the colour palette consistent.”
A Kartell lamp sits on a Componibili side table, and an Amp Lamp pendant from Normann Copenhagen provides another layer to the subtle lighting scheme.
As for how it feels to live in this historic space, Campbell describes it as being within a sense of unity where “everything feels like it sits happily together. It feels harmonious. In winter, it’s one of the warmest houses I’ve ever lived in thanks to the underfloor heating and double glazing that was installed as part of the restoration. In summer, with the timber ranch sliders open onto the courtyard, you have an extra living space.
“Although I initially had some trepidation about the size of it, and elements like the communal laundry, I’ve come to enjoy it; you actually talk to your neighbours and there’s a sense of community. It has a special feeling, this place.”
Words: Clare Chapman. Images: Ryan Thorpe
“Home”, Issue 515, Dec/Jan 2025, pp.78-82.
https://homemagazine.nz/an-interior-designer-makes-a-home-in-one-of-the-dorset-street-flats/
Reproduced with the permission of the publisher.
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Home magazine names Dorset Street Flats on their list of highlights from the 2022 Open Christchurch festival.
HOME on tour: Open Christchurch
HOME attended the second iteration of the annual architecture event Open Christchurch. Here are our highlights.
Dorset Street flats
No architectural tour of Christchurch would be complete without a generous hat-tipping to Sir Miles Warren, who can be credited as being the most influential designer in that city's contemporary fabric. Being able to visit this humble set of flats, where a young Miles first exercised his passion for a very personal modernism - amalgamating Japanese influences with brutalism — was, symbolically, a great addition to the event. An insightful tour of the empty, recently restored flats was guided by the architect in charge (Young Architects), who provided an in-depth, relaxed, and affable look at Miles' own bachelor pad and the adjacent flats he shared with his three compadres:
Michael Weston, Simon Wood, and Michael Davis.
The recently restored Dorset Street flats. The project was Sir Miles Warren's first foray into residential modernism combining touches of Brutalism and a Japanese aesthetic. The flat have been restored by Young Architects.
Words: Federico Monsalve. Imagery: Sarah Rowlands and Peanut Productions
https://homemagazine.nz/home-on-tour-open-christchurch/
HOME on tour: Open Christchurch
HOME attended the second iteration of the annual architecture event Open Christchurch. Here are our highlights.
Dorset Street flats
No architectural tour of Christchurch would be complete without a generous hat-tipping to Sir Miles Warren, who can be credited as being the most influential designer in that city's contemporary fabric. Being able to visit this humble set of flats, where a young Miles first exercised his passion for a very personal modernism - amalgamating Japanese influences with brutalism — was, symbolically, a great addition to the event. An insightful tour of the empty, recently restored flats was guided by the architect in charge (Young Architects), who provided an in-depth, relaxed, and affable look at Miles' own bachelor pad and the adjacent flats he shared with his three compadres:
Michael Weston, Simon Wood, and Michael Davis.
The recently restored Dorset Street flats. The project was Sir Miles Warren's first foray into residential modernism combining touches of Brutalism and a Japanese aesthetic. The flat have been restored by Young Architects.
Words: Federico Monsalve. Imagery: Sarah Rowlands and Peanut Productions
https://homemagazine.nz/home-on-tour-open-christchurch/
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Excerpt from Sir Miles Warren's autobiography on his career-making Dorset Street Flats.
UGLY BUILDING? GOOD!
In this excerpt from Miles Warren: An Autobiography, one of the country’s best architects looks back over his life - and the controversial development that helped make his name.
In my second-year sixth form the headmaster asked me what I intended to be when I left school. “An architect, sir.” His response: “Oh, Warren minor, we had high hopes for you.” Clearly, in his eyes, I was about to enter an occupation, not a profession, and one that was akin to carpentry or plumbing. The only respectable professions were law or medicine; accountancy was mere bean counting - a trade.
When I told my father I wanted to be an architect he gave a noncommittal humph. Then, sensibly, and unbeknown to me, he called upon all the architects he knew - Heathcote Helmore of Helmore & Cotterill, Alan Manson, Gordon Lucas and Cecil Wood; that is, all the city’s best-known architects at the time, except Bill Trengrove. They all, without exception, told Father architecture was a dying profession that offered no future. I was not daunted by this sobering news. I somehow knew that architecture was the only thing I might be good at and monetary reward did not seem at all important.
[After graduating from the University of Auckland and working in London Miles Warren returned to Christchurch. One of his notable early projects was the Dorset Street flats.]
Back in 1956 Michael Weston, Simon Wood and Michael Davis and I, all bachelors, decided to build a block of eight flats for our own occupation and to let. By good luck we found an ideal site in little Dorset Street, which runs between Victoria Street and Park Terrace, next to Bishops Court (now Bishopspark Retirement Village). Unusually for Christchurch, it had a long 115-foot (35m) frontage instead of the standard narrow 53-foot (16.2m) width running a long way back. For me it was the perfect commission - my partners gave me a free hand and I was able to put my theories into practice and stuff the design full of everything I knew, including all my university and London experience.
The essence of the building is that, instead of the typical New Zealand light timber-framed structure, solid masonry walls bear the weight of the building. Each flat is simply a box of concrete-block walls, with two full-height openings to the north, and slots to the rear. Within the outer box are two further ‘solid’ boxes, one for the bathroom and the other the wardrobe. I developed recessed window and door detailing, with the frames set away from the wall to emphasise the depth of the concrete block. The underside of the first-floor concrete slabs was lined with 3-foot x 1-inch (1m x 2.54cm) boards.
These flats, our first use of concrete block and fairface concrete exposed both inside and outside in habitable rooms, followed one of the basic tenets of modernism: that buildings should demonstrate their structure, how they are built and the materials with which they are made. It was a form of modernism that came to be named, unfortunately, brutalism.
The Dorset Street Flats were regarded as the ugliest buildings in town; the tour buses regularly detoured to see what was dubbed ‘Fort Dorset”. As a young architect I was proud to achieve such notoriety. Our friends thought we were so poor we could not afford plaster on the concrete block. Internally, the bare walls were seen as a counterpoint to the soft textures of rugs, curtains and furnishings, and externally the garden walls as a background to luxuriant planting. Could we have foreseen all the drear concrete-block motels to come?
The builders were Cecil Davenport and his brother Snow, both rather dour and humourless, and a pesky apprentice. About halfway through building, Davenport, exasperated by my attitude, demanded to know why I looked so critical and unhappy with the work. He had misread me: I was being hard on myself and was worried about my design and detailing, not about his good workmanship.
Christchurch concrete block in those days was very porous. In heavy rain, the water filled the cavities in the two skin walls and flooded the floors, a disaster just before the flats were to be occupied. The blocklayer had failed to make weepholes at the foot of the walls, and I asked Davenport to drill appropriate holes. I had the satisfaction of seeing the water spout out into his face.
Michael Weston and I did a lot of work on the flats - painting, fixing staircases, laying bricks and making gardens. We got on very well together, and making buildings became our favourite hobby. For the next 15 years we continued to build small blocks of flats; there was not a month we were not building or designing. In one go the flats established new building techniques that were continued and developed over the next 10 years.
Miles Warren: An Autobiography is published by Canterbury University Press. The exhibition Miles: A Life In Architecture runs from March 7 to June 14 at the Christchurch Art Gallery. Sir Miles is also designing a garden for the Ellerslie Flower Show, which runs in Christchurch from March 11-15.
“Home New Zealand”, Feb/Mar 2009, ACP Magazines, ISSN 9 414576 002527 02, pp 44-45.
Reproduced with the permission of the publisher.
UGLY BUILDING? GOOD!
In this excerpt from Miles Warren: An Autobiography, one of the country’s best architects looks back over his life - and the controversial development that helped make his name.
In my second-year sixth form the headmaster asked me what I intended to be when I left school. “An architect, sir.” His response: “Oh, Warren minor, we had high hopes for you.” Clearly, in his eyes, I was about to enter an occupation, not a profession, and one that was akin to carpentry or plumbing. The only respectable professions were law or medicine; accountancy was mere bean counting - a trade.
When I told my father I wanted to be an architect he gave a noncommittal humph. Then, sensibly, and unbeknown to me, he called upon all the architects he knew - Heathcote Helmore of Helmore & Cotterill, Alan Manson, Gordon Lucas and Cecil Wood; that is, all the city’s best-known architects at the time, except Bill Trengrove. They all, without exception, told Father architecture was a dying profession that offered no future. I was not daunted by this sobering news. I somehow knew that architecture was the only thing I might be good at and monetary reward did not seem at all important.
[After graduating from the University of Auckland and working in London Miles Warren returned to Christchurch. One of his notable early projects was the Dorset Street flats.]
Back in 1956 Michael Weston, Simon Wood and Michael Davis and I, all bachelors, decided to build a block of eight flats for our own occupation and to let. By good luck we found an ideal site in little Dorset Street, which runs between Victoria Street and Park Terrace, next to Bishops Court (now Bishopspark Retirement Village). Unusually for Christchurch, it had a long 115-foot (35m) frontage instead of the standard narrow 53-foot (16.2m) width running a long way back. For me it was the perfect commission - my partners gave me a free hand and I was able to put my theories into practice and stuff the design full of everything I knew, including all my university and London experience.
The essence of the building is that, instead of the typical New Zealand light timber-framed structure, solid masonry walls bear the weight of the building. Each flat is simply a box of concrete-block walls, with two full-height openings to the north, and slots to the rear. Within the outer box are two further ‘solid’ boxes, one for the bathroom and the other the wardrobe. I developed recessed window and door detailing, with the frames set away from the wall to emphasise the depth of the concrete block. The underside of the first-floor concrete slabs was lined with 3-foot x 1-inch (1m x 2.54cm) boards.
These flats, our first use of concrete block and fairface concrete exposed both inside and outside in habitable rooms, followed one of the basic tenets of modernism: that buildings should demonstrate their structure, how they are built and the materials with which they are made. It was a form of modernism that came to be named, unfortunately, brutalism.
The Dorset Street Flats were regarded as the ugliest buildings in town; the tour buses regularly detoured to see what was dubbed ‘Fort Dorset”. As a young architect I was proud to achieve such notoriety. Our friends thought we were so poor we could not afford plaster on the concrete block. Internally, the bare walls were seen as a counterpoint to the soft textures of rugs, curtains and furnishings, and externally the garden walls as a background to luxuriant planting. Could we have foreseen all the drear concrete-block motels to come?
The builders were Cecil Davenport and his brother Snow, both rather dour and humourless, and a pesky apprentice. About halfway through building, Davenport, exasperated by my attitude, demanded to know why I looked so critical and unhappy with the work. He had misread me: I was being hard on myself and was worried about my design and detailing, not about his good workmanship.
Christchurch concrete block in those days was very porous. In heavy rain, the water filled the cavities in the two skin walls and flooded the floors, a disaster just before the flats were to be occupied. The blocklayer had failed to make weepholes at the foot of the walls, and I asked Davenport to drill appropriate holes. I had the satisfaction of seeing the water spout out into his face.
Michael Weston and I did a lot of work on the flats - painting, fixing staircases, laying bricks and making gardens. We got on very well together, and making buildings became our favourite hobby. For the next 15 years we continued to build small blocks of flats; there was not a month we were not building or designing. In one go the flats established new building techniques that were continued and developed over the next 10 years.
Miles Warren: An Autobiography is published by Canterbury University Press. The exhibition Miles: A Life In Architecture runs from March 7 to June 14 at the Christchurch Art Gallery. Sir Miles is also designing a garden for the Ellerslie Flower Show, which runs in Christchurch from March 11-15.
“Home New Zealand”, Feb/Mar 2009, ACP Magazines, ISSN 9 414576 002527 02, pp 44-45.
Reproduced with the permission of the publisher.
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