Reprint of Miles Warren's 1978 lecture to the AGM of the NZIA Auckland Branch, entitled "Style In New Zealand Architecture".
As I have said, I was in London at the LCC, extraordinarily fortunate to be sitting right in the middle of the birth of Brutalism. I went over the Hunstanton School with the Smithsons and Ove Arup - that is the Miesian steel and brick building, suffering now badly from the salt spray of the Wash. I went to the great debate at the AA about the Leeds housing competition, lapped up the Corbusian influence of the LCC led by Bill Howell, Killick, Amis, Partridge etc. and like so many architects, came home to New Zealand brimful of ideas and determined to force them on an unsuspecting public. We designed within the principles clearly laid down by the Group. Modest blocks of flats followed one after the other. The Brutalist bare brick of England became white concrete block used as far as I know for the first time as an architectural element in a habitable room in flats in Dorset Street. Think of all the grotty motel rooms that has spawned! Fairface concrete beams sat firmly on load-bearing reinforced masonry - all has European substance. The sequence of flats led to Christchurch College whose design began in 1960. It still surprises me today that such a pillar of the establishment should instruct an architect just in his thirties to design and then accept such a building. That was also the year we began the Students’ Union in Canterbury, aptly describes as a skeletal encrustation.
Tourist buses used to detour to stop outside the flats in Dorset Street. They had the accolade of being the ugliest buildings in town!
MILES WARREN, “Style In New Zealand Architecture” (1978), “New Dreamland: Writing In New Zealand Architecture”, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins (ed), Godwit Random House, 2005, ISBN 1-86962-118-2, p 246, 251, 254.
For the full text of the article, click below.
As I have said, I was in London at the LCC, extraordinarily fortunate to be sitting right in the middle of the birth of Brutalism. I went over the Hunstanton School with the Smithsons and Ove Arup - that is the Miesian steel and brick building, suffering now badly from the salt spray of the Wash. I went to the great debate at the AA about the Leeds housing competition, lapped up the Corbusian influence of the LCC led by Bill Howell, Killick, Amis, Partridge etc. and like so many architects, came home to New Zealand brimful of ideas and determined to force them on an unsuspecting public. We designed within the principles clearly laid down by the Group. Modest blocks of flats followed one after the other. The Brutalist bare brick of England became white concrete block used as far as I know for the first time as an architectural element in a habitable room in flats in Dorset Street. Think of all the grotty motel rooms that has spawned! Fairface concrete beams sat firmly on load-bearing reinforced masonry - all has European substance. The sequence of flats led to Christchurch College whose design began in 1960. It still surprises me today that such a pillar of the establishment should instruct an architect just in his thirties to design and then accept such a building. That was also the year we began the Students’ Union in Canterbury, aptly describes as a skeletal encrustation.
Tourist buses used to detour to stop outside the flats in Dorset Street. They had the accolade of being the ugliest buildings in town!
MILES WARREN, “Style In New Zealand Architecture” (1978), “New Dreamland: Writing In New Zealand Architecture”, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins (ed), Godwit Random House, 2005, ISBN 1-86962-118-2, p 246, 251, 254.
For the full text of the article, click below.
Reprint of Peter Beaven's article "South Island Architecture", originally published in "Royal Institute Of British Architects Journal", September 1967.
The other construction system widely employed is concrete masonry, reinforced against earthquake, left fairfaced inside and out, and tied together with fairfaced in situ concrete beams and slabs disposed to create voids and spaces within. The bearing clockwork and concrete beams give geometric grids of horizontals and verticals capable of much modelling. This system of construction dominates the smaller commercial projects and much housing work in the South Island, and many architects are capable of working imaginatively with it.
Miles Warren came back from England very early with an understanding of the brutalistic approach then vitalising the young architects. In some flats in Christchurch he used, in 1957, the fairfaced concrete structure: pierced openings, concrete used for ancillary detail, as found blocks, and finishes. The shattering first view of these flats, their statement of private urban living and their frank use of materials, was a revolution to New Zealand architects. We could see the future.
PETER BEAVEN, “South Island Architecture” (1967), “New Dreamland: Writing In New Zealand Architecture”, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins (ed), Godwit Random House, 2005, ISBN 1-86962-118-2, pp 178-179.
The other construction system widely employed is concrete masonry, reinforced against earthquake, left fairfaced inside and out, and tied together with fairfaced in situ concrete beams and slabs disposed to create voids and spaces within. The bearing clockwork and concrete beams give geometric grids of horizontals and verticals capable of much modelling. This system of construction dominates the smaller commercial projects and much housing work in the South Island, and many architects are capable of working imaginatively with it.
Miles Warren came back from England very early with an understanding of the brutalistic approach then vitalising the young architects. In some flats in Christchurch he used, in 1957, the fairfaced concrete structure: pierced openings, concrete used for ancillary detail, as found blocks, and finishes. The shattering first view of these flats, their statement of private urban living and their frank use of materials, was a revolution to New Zealand architects. We could see the future.
PETER BEAVEN, “South Island Architecture” (1967), “New Dreamland: Writing In New Zealand Architecture”, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins (ed), Godwit Random House, 2005, ISBN 1-86962-118-2, pp 178-179.