ARCHITECTURE

Architecture, considered as a cultural expression, is the outward and visible sign of the changing patterns of thought, life, and society. As Gowans has pointed out (Architecture in Canada, 1958), the following patterns, operating simultaneously and often superimposed on one another, are apparent in the development of any styles of housing.

1. Man's successive stages of dominance over nature and his environment expressed architecturally by his command over materials and by the relationship of his buildings to the space or nature around them.

2. National tradition expressed in architecture as the development of certain consistent preferences, particular kinds and ways of decoration, proportions, organizations and materials.

3. Changing beliefs about what constitutes “architecture” as distinct from “mere building”. This involves both aesthetic and philosophical ideals.

4. Successive historical styles which result from the interaction of these broader patterns, and particularly from the sharp conflict between the cultivated tradition of academic architecture and the vernacular tradition of unselfconscious common people.

None of the arts in New Zealand, “useful” or fine, has ever existed in isolation. For the first hundred years our architectural history has continued to reflect the provincial dependence of remote, “genteel” traditionalists, belatedly adopting overseas fashions but with a steadily diminishing time lag between the distant cultural centre and the isolated provinces. Remoteness fostered the snobbery of the overseas product which persists to the present day. Though the heart remained in the “home country”, the home lay in the New World of the Pacific, and the building forms, materials, and techniques have more in common with those colonial brothers–Australia and West Coast America–than with the mother of all, Victorian England.

The history of domestic architecture measures the progress in standards of comfort and convenience and the development of mechanical equipment. The basic task of the builder–sheltering man, his work, and his possessions in structures that give spiritual as well as material gratifications–remains constant.

The Maoris

For centuries after their arrival in New Zealand the Maoris lived in isolation and gradually adapted themselves to the new environment. But, as Aotearoa was much colder than their former Polynesian homes, of necessity their material arts changed and developed. Warm clothing and houses were needed; new techniques were evolved for weaving flax fibres into garments and for erecting large plank-built houses. The materials and construction of their houses varied with the locality and type of dwelling. It is not possible to classify houses according to function, except that, in general, the functions of meeting, sleeping, cooking, and food storage were expressed separately in variations of three basic shapes–the rectangular, circular, and the oval. The whare runanga, the assembly or meeting house, always conformed to a rectangular, simple, thatched, gable-roofed form, with deep front verandah that provided shelter from the wind and rain. Facing the marae or open meeting space, this whare was the embodiment of the tribal community. As in all primitive architecture, sculpture formed an integral part of the building; the structural form and the decoration, applied pattern or carved legend, were expressed as a rhythmic, unified whole. Magnificently carved wall panels and tall posts supported the painted roof structure–wall plates, continuous ridge beam, and bold rafters. In the main the materials available were skilfully and imaginatively used with great craftsmanship; the plan and structure of the building were physically functional, even psychologically and spiritually functional in an intrinsically architectural way that our present day buildings seldom are. The whare and the pa were genuine cultural expressions of the community life of the Maori people. They had little influence on European immigrants, but there is now a revaluation of the Maori heritage by younger present-day architects in search of roots based on a national building tradition. This has aroused an awareness of similar “tent and cave” architectural ideas.

The Pioneering Era – Simplicity 1820–60

“Makeshift” Adaptation to the New Environment

The primitive shelters of the first European immigrants to New Zealand express the embryonic growth of all living things and the root of all architecture—the separation of “human” from “natural” environment. Architecture involves the idea of man moulding Nature to suit his own needs. The early settlers met Nature on different terms from the Maoris, for they had the power to conquer and control and thereby to shape their traditional Western culture to the new environment. At the beginning, with limited time, tools, and makeshift materials, occasionally with help of friendly natives, the pioneers built “temporary” basic shelters; a universal stage of architectural development. They improvised “primeval” shelters of raupo, toitoi, flax, fern, and totara bark; tents from poles, saplings, canvas, and planks or split slabs; tree-fern huts or more permanent dwellings from clay, sods, “wattle and daub”, or stone. Isolated from the outside world by the vast ocean and from each other by virgin bush, mountains, and rivers, they had to adapt themselves to conditions of great hardship in lonely settlements.

A Characteristic “Makeshift” House

A typical pioneer home of this period was the tworoom, “but and ben” cottage (“but”–kitchen, “ben”–parlour) with low walls, possibly with ladder access to the attic roof space, with roof thatched or of wood shingles; a solid cube with minimum openings, two small oiled-canvas or calico-covered windows and a door between; a massive chimney in the centre of the house or on the gable end wall. It was essentially a “crofter's cabin”, that universal primitive house type from which all domestic architecture is descended–a plan and shape that has tenaciously persisted for a thousand years or more in the British Isles.

Folk Architecture–the Functional Tradition

The second architectural phase of the pioneering era was expressed in the development of the weatherboard on light-frame cottages, built with timber bearing the marks of Iron Age tools. They expressed the vernacular of the people–a “popular” taste that was common throughout the country and, indeed, throughout the British colonies. These pioneer tradesmen used simple forms appropriate to the function, and often the fine proportions reflect the principle that beauty lies in fixed proportions, not in fixed forms. Uncomplicated artisans adapted the splendid functional tradition of the British Isles to available materials and evolved methods of construction and usage to suit local climate. As they adjusted to the warmer climate and stronger light, the verandah was used as a simple, low-pitch, leanto structure at the front, where one could wash and change boots and clothes or leave supplies under cover; later the wider verandah on two or three sides was widely used, not as an addition, but conceived as a transition space, an integral part of the house. As the family grew, portions of the verandah were enclosed as extra rooms. This flexible, timber vernacular, modest and restrained, bearing the marks of anonymous craftsmen and with a strong emphasis on simple living, was widely used until the late sixties and runs as a thin thread in isolated buildings until the present day. The functional tradition can be seen in remote farmhouses and outbuildings and in those few buildings that have survived from this early period, such as the first and second timber buildings, the Butler/Kemp house, Kerikeri (1822); George Clarke's Mission House, Waimate North (1832); Lavaud's house, Akaroa (c. 1840); John Logan Campbell's “Acacia” Cottage, Cornwall Park, Auckland (1841); F. E. Maning's house, Onoke, Hokianga (1840s); Ford cottage (stone) Panmure, Auckland (1848); Bedggood and Pugh's Watermill, Waimate North (1850); old cob house, Molesworth Station, Marlborough (c. 1850); Wm. Bray's cottage (cob), Avonhead, Canterbury (early 1850s); Rangikura farmhouse, Otaki (1859); military blockhouses around Auckland, Onehunga (c. 1856); Blockhouse Bay and Otahuhu (1867); or Wallaceville, Wellington (1861); “Allendale”, Mount Albert, Auckland (1860); miners' cottages, Arrowtown, and other homesteads in Central Otago (1860s); and the Morven Hills woolshed (stone) Lindis, Otago (early 1880s).

Heart kauri, matai, and totara were used for framing and weatherboards, and kauri and rimu for joinery and furniture. The nails were hand forged. In Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago, where timber was scarce, boxed cob, slab, cob and ricker, and rammed earth or stone were commonly used. The chimneys were built of hand-made sun-dried bricks or slabs covered with clay and galvanised iron. Glass was in small panes, and oiled canvas or calico often served instead.

Characteristic House in Functional Tradition

The main elements of the house of this period are the rectangular or “L”-shaped plan, two, three, or four rooms off a central corridor on the ground floor; a medium or steeply pitched roof (covered with thatch, shingles, galvanised iron, or, later, slates) changing to a lower pitched verandah roof at the eave line, simply supported by light timber posts. The centrally placed front door was balanced by symmetrically placed small-paned, casement or double-hung windows. When extra accommodation was needed, a leanto kitchen addition was made at the back, or else the front and rear walls were carried up to attic window sills. The higher springing of the roof allowed greater headroom in the attic bedrooms, which were entered by “companionway” stairs from passage, but the small dormers over the verandah or gable-end windows barely lit this attic sleeping space. The New England colonial “salt box” shape was common in larger houses which required more than roof or attic space. Here a medium double-pitched roof was carried over the additional rooms at the back and the front verandah. Often the original “makeshift” cottage was economically adapted as a wing of a new building, intersecting it at right angles. Timber buildings offered the “flexibility” required by the family–an organic unit, growing, not standing still. The early buildings governed by such functional considerations and obeying empirical laws, had an “organic” quality quite devoid of “featurism”. They were simple in shape and detail–the simplicity of “commonsense” building; they obeyed the timeless rule of craftsmanship–honesty of intent and abhorrence of misrepresentation, and materials and structure were logically and directly expressed in unpretentious dwellings that realistically reflected the way of life of unselfconscious builders.

Pioneering–Elegance 1820–60

The cultural tradition inherited by the empire builders was founded on a belief in the inherent orderliness of Nature, confidence in reason, faith in the ancients of Greece and Rome, and, deriving from these, an acceptance of rulers of taste. Man in complete control of his environment was the essence of this tradition. This control over nature, materials, and surroundings is architecturally expressed in the English houses of the Georgian/Regency period (1714–1830) where each individual has his privacy but shares in the calm dignity of the whole community life. The cultivated upper class set a high standard of living and design, which is reflected in the architecture of the period throughout the Commonwealth and North America; but the tyranny of their classical taste and set rules was not so binding on the rising middle class who pursued commerce and comfort and expressed their own way of life in the succeeding Victorian Age.

Social Background in New Zealand

Many settlements throughout New Zealand were based on the ideas of one of the most remarkable of Britain's colonial reformers, E. G. Wakefield and his New Zealand Company. Their aim was to replace haphazard separate settlements with an organised group scheme. Wakefield considered that such colonisation would “help remove the fear of political disturbance” and induce the common people to “bear their lot with patience”. Profitable employment would thus be found. They would reproduce the civilisation of England, and to a point they succeeded, especially in the Canterbury settlement where the Wakefield theories made perhaps the strongest impact.

“Georgian and Regency Style” Expressed in Houses

The immigrants brought with them an English taste for privacy based on the Elizabethan principle that each family should have its own home with a separate room for each person. New Zealand houses of this period reflect the interaction of two conflicting traditions–the new superimposed on the old. The clients, landowners and the “official” class, showed their admiration of the Classical inheritance and the ideal of “squire and country-house”; the builders, conservative artisan and craftsmen, and the servant class, had their roots in the functional tradition and simple living. This conflict was expressed not so much in the evolution of new forms as in the particular way that characteristic features from both traditions were combined–ranging in expression from simple crudity to an elegant “preciousness”. When, however, the Classical forms and details expressed an intuitive understanding of the spirit of the tradition in which they were working, Georgian architecture became the vernacular of the people. It was a universal language and the forms expressed ideas that were widely understood. Even as late as 1878, when Greenway added the verandahs and leanto addition to Pompallier House at Russell, there were isolated examples of this tradition, but they were no longer fashionable, for “Gothic Revival” and the “Battle of the Styles” were well under way. The best remaining examples of this elegant period are the Stone Store, Kerikeri (1833); Treaty House, Waitangi, designed by one of the most polished Australian architects, John Verge (1833); Bishop Pompallier's house, Russell (1843); the singleroom library (1841) and Mission House, Tauranga, built by the Rev. A. N. Brown (1847); and the Langlais Eteveneaux House, Akaroa (c. 1840).

From the English Regency period (1800–30) emerged a style based on the “back to nature” movement of painters, poets, and writers. This “picturesque romanticism” was a revolt against the set rules of Georgian architecture, which was expressed architecturally in a new relationship between house and garden. To get as close as possible to Nature was the consistent aim of Regency architecture, and this integration of house and garden, of design and living produced some of the most elegant houses in our short history. Vestiges of this tradition are seen in such Auckland houses as the old Nathan house, St. Kevens, Karangahape Road; the former Crippled Children's House, Mount Street; old St. Paul's Vicarage, Eden Crescent; Hulme Court, Parnell (c. 1843); Glenmore Lodge, Mount Albert (1844); Motions Mill House, Western Springs (c. 1865); and Sir George Grey's Mansion House, Kawau Island (1871). Also in this category are the Gould's house, Russell (1850); Lord Rutherford's home, Foxhill, Nelson, and the Greer homestead, Patearoa, and Mount Smart farmhouse of Central Otago.

The Victorian Era

The Gothic Revival

Though not homogenous, Victorian society was founded on faith in the sanity of the family and the home. In seeking to express this “individuality” there was a tendency to look on architecture as a means of communicating ideas, and architectural forms and details were used for symbolic rather than functional reasons. The house became a symbol of social standing and “Gothic Revival” marks the start of a new era. The genuine medieval tradition of function and structure was forgotten; the “Gothic” veneer was a sentimental decoration that reminded the expatriates of “Home”, and in time became the accepted style for all buildings–domestic or public. This trend towards “picturesque romanticism” was carried to the extent of building an ornate false facade in “Carpenters' Gothic” on to a simple cottage in the functional tradition (Morrinsville)–the start of Main Street, New Zealand. The basic house plan is still “Model T” with rooms either side of a narrow passage and with bathroom and kitchen (servants' quarters) relegated to the sunless south. The asymmetrical “Regency” style is developed by projecting the front sitting room and “featuring” the steep gable and wall, with bay window, fretted barge boards, and finial post. Standard (mass produced) joinery was available and doors, windows, and glazed verandah panels were decorated with small squares and rectangles of highly coloured glass arranged around clear centre panes. Ornate furniture and fittings became symbols of opulence and hence social position. The conservatory, furniture, and decoration were symbols of “taste and elegance” and, like the separate “tradesman's entrance”, were used to “keep up appearances”. The incongruities and “Battle of the Styles” which mark this phase were the result of the grafting of “Gothic Revivalism” on to the older tradition, which gradually disappeared. Hence the indiscriminate mixing of architectural details derived from any historical period. Some of the finest buildings of this early period still remaining are: the oldest church in New Zealand, Christ Church, Russell (1836); Waimate North (1839–71); St. Mary's Church, New Plymouth, Rev. F. Thatcher (1843); the unique Maori Church at Rangiatea, Otaki (1849), blending Maori meeting house, timber functional, and “Gothic Revival” styles; the Selwyn churches and houses around Auckland, many designed by the clerical architects Dr A. G. Purchas and Rev. F. Thatcher, from St. John's College, Tamaki (1847), to Ayr Street House, Parnell (1855); St. Mark's Church, Remuera (1857); St. Paul's, Wellington (1865–73); St. Mary's, Parnell, Auckland, architect, B. W. Montfort (1888); Robert Rhodes's homestead, Parau, Lyttelton (1853); Dalcroy House, Lyttelton (1859); the “row houses” in Cumberland Street, Dunedin; First Church, Dunedin, architect R. A. Lawson (1874); and the “Selwynesque” house, Victoria Avenue, Wanganui (1860s).

Picturesque Eclecticism

From the sixties to the nineties land was needed for the new settlers, and a rapidly changing pattern of life is apparent in the houses of this period. In the military settlements of the Auckland Province “Fencible” cottages, officers' residences, blockhouses, and barracks, which were built in the earlier functional and elegant traditions, bear witness to a North Island harrassed by the Maori Wars of the sixties. In the South Island, where the gold discoveries had brought about a rapid increase of population, the buildings in the seventies and, in the north, in the eighties, reflect the command over building materials and techniques and changing styles–the trend is from simplicity to complexity, from low to high relief, and from restraint to grandiloquence. In 1868 J. E. FitzGerald was declaiming against false fronts of “large dead walls of scantling and boards” built “to make the house look bigger than it is, to gratify a false and ignoble vanity”. Regretfully he recalled “those small unpretending tenements which were built by the early colonists; some of them not ungraceful in their proportions; all of them possessing the beauty of simplicity and truth, devoid of vulgar pretension, tawdry vanity and inappropriate ornament”. Outwardly the buildings of the seventies and eighties differed from one another only in the degree wherein each expressed the “personal taste” of the builder, but beneath the diversity and visual anarchy is a basic unity of style, founded on consistent principles, that we can recognise as a cultural expression of High Victorian life. The “picturesque eclecticism” of the buildings of this period set the atmosphere of most New Zealand cities and towns and, behind the facade of “modernisation”, the underlying taste and aesthetic attitudes of wealthy Victorians persisted through superficial changes of style and ornament to find expression in the suburban homes of the twentieth century.

The general development of “styles” at this time is based on the following influences superimposed on our earlier pioneering tradition. In the small house the fashionable “clichés” were as integral as the feathers on a woman's hat–the builders' vernacular limped into the twentieth century, tenacious but battered by the cultivated tradition. In larger architect-designed buildings “Italianate” was favoured initially; later came the heavy eaves, cornices, brackets, and window dressings, coupled round-headed or double-hung “Chicago” windows, which seeped down the social scale to common usage. Similarly, the Great Exhibition of 1851 influenced furniture design and decoration. Prince Albert's “model home for four families” could be seen scaled down for two families in Cleveland Street, Parnell, Auckland. Finally, in the seventies, came “French ‘Neo-grec’ romanticism”, with its high Slate roofs, cast-iron fringe, and wrought-iron finials.

Just as the popular New Zealand artists Barraud and Gully sought the “picturesque and beautiful” with painstaking craftsmanship and “meticulous piling on of detail”, the Victorian builders created their “picturesque eclecticism” by the use of such building materials as mouldings, joinery, and turnery; cast and wrought iron; pattern-stamped metal ceilings and eaves; wood imitating stone; corrugated iron, slate, tiles, and terra cotta; and frieze tiles and “streaky bacon” brickwork.

The Victorian builders' mastery of local materials and their eclectic handling of architectural styles can be seen in any fashionable suburb of the period, or more permanently displayed in the architect-designed public buildings, though the latter tend to represent the “Battle of the Styles” of the upper school of design. An early building showing the influence of English romanticism is the “stick style” Auckland Hospital (1847) with “emphasis given to the structural and visual manipulation of the timber framing sticks”, and its steep Gothic shingle roofs and massive brick chimneys. Of similar interest are the Palladian “Italianate” second Government House at Auckland, architect William Mason (1855); “Elizabethan” Provincial Building, Nelson, architect Maxwell Burg (1861); “Alberton”, the Kerr Taylor home, Mount Albert, Auckland (1862); Ferndale Park, Mount Albert, Auckland (1864); “Gothic” Anglican Cathedral, Christchurch, architect G. Gilbert Scott (1861–64); Supreme Court, Auckland, architect Ed. Ramsey (1867); and Bank of New Zealand, Queen Street, Auckland, architect L. Larry (1869). By 1877 local builders had erected what is commonly regarded as being “the largest permanent wooden building in the world”, the Government Buildings, Wellington. The Government Architect, W. H. Clayton, also designed the monumental second Government House, Wellington (1871). Also of this period are Firth's Castle, Mount Eden, Auckland (1874); Larnach's Castle, Dunedin (1876); “Pah Farm” (now Monte Cecilia), Mount Roskill, Auckland, (1879) architect Wm. Mahony; Sir John Logan Campbell's “Kilbryde”, Parnell, Auckland (1881); and French Public Library and Art Gallery, Auckland, architects Grainger and D'Ebro (1887). The “Balmoral baronial” Admiralty House, Auckland (1902), which was demolished in 1916, Allan McLean's 40-room mansion, Hollylea, Christchurch (1903), and P. E. Theomin's “Jacobean” mansion, Dunedin, by the London architects Ernest George and Yeates (1905), mark the end of the period. The ebullience and vitality have gone and there are now signs of the “Shingle Style” and the growing American influence.

The Late Victorian Problem: 1890–1918

With prosperity came the demand for large expensive houses and the materialisation of a typically Victorian concept, an organised architectural profession. As early as 1872 Canterbury had an Association of Architects, followed by similar bodies in other centres. The New Zealand Institute of Architects (N.Z.I.A.) was founded in 1905 and, by 1913, had 73 members. Publications, such as Modern Homes of New Zealand (1917) and Commonsense Homes for New Zealanders (c. 1921), suggested that the Late Victorian style had lost favour with the architects, if not their clients. The former preferred “one style revival”, the public, the popular “Queen Anne”, which featured broken “picturesque” roofs, strident “marseilles” tiles, slates, fussy terracotta ridges and finial decorations, elaborate false gables, with curved ribbed metal eaves, and course brackets over bulbous bay windows. Expressive of the Art Nouveau was the fretted wood ornament on verandahs, halls, and furniture, matched by leaded casement fanlights and doors. The typical house had projected “feature” rooms front and side, with narrow timber verandah between. With its irregular outline, aimless contrasts, incomprehensive ornament, without order, proportion, harmony, or unity, “Queen Anne” was perhaps the lowest standard in architectural style.

The Fruits of Materialism: 1918–46

This was an era of regimentation, mass entertainment, totalitarian systems, and standardisation. Technology, propaganda, and high-pressure advertising assaulted the senses and the individual was submerged in the mass. Unable to control the insecure and changeable world, caught in expanding cities and towns, the suburban dweller sought to create an oasis where every brick and tree could be accounted for, and the unpredictable excluded from everyday life. In 1894 the Government of New Zealand had passed an Act that enabled homebuilders to borrow from the State at favourable rates of interest; later it was extended to provide for the erection of private dwellings by State, local authorities, and other groups of persons. The census definition of a private dwelling is “the residence of a family”, even though it be only a room or rooms in a house. In 1921 the size of the average family house was 4·28 persons; in 1926–4·17; in 1936–3·90, a decrease of some significance on the design of houses. The isolation of New Zealand was breaking down under the impact of revolutionary ideas and rapid communications. A post-war boom was curtailed by the disastrous world slump, which caused widespread unrest, distress, and unemployment. The 7,000 permits issued for new dwellings in 1927 fell to 1,500 in 1933. In 1935 the tide turned and the newly elected Labour Party began to apply their policy of Socialism; the Housing Survey Act of 1935 sought information on such topics as type, construction, condition of dwelling, services, number of occupants, bedrooms, degree of overcrowding, storage of food, provision of light and ventilation, and yard and air space. In 1936 the Department of Housing Construction was formed to plan houses and housing schemes. These were not to be mass-provided “workers” dwellings, but were to be State owned and of a higher standard than those occupied by the ordinary citizen. Housing had become a public utility. But the shadow of war spread once more over the world. While London was bombed we celebrated our Centennial (1940) with ponderous gaiety and published surveys of national development that became landmarks of our culture. The dark days of 1942 and the American invasion receded, and revealed that the main features of New Zealand life had survived the crisis by a narrow margin.

Characteristic House Types – Seven Basic Styles

Between the wars, seven basic styles appeared. Details from each became interwoven and, from the amalgam, mainly by “austerity Queen Anne” out of “arts and crafts”, evolved the “State house minimum”. This has been the dominant style of the last 30 years, in which social and architectural planners expressed in a builders' vernacular the achievements of “the practical man” and the Welfare State. The basic styles were: 1. The architect's “arts and crafts” cottage; 2. “L” shape; 3. Speculative builders “Californian bungalow”; 4. “Spanish Mission”; 5. Housing Departments “State house minimum”; 6. “Moderne”; and 7. “Waterfall front”.

Basic Style 1. “Arts and Crafts” Cottage, and “Garden City” Landscaping

The early New Zealand pioneers naturally did their best to preserve close cultural ties with the Homeland, and English influences continued to be reflected in local building styles. After the turn of the century the influence of William Morris (through his teaching against all machine-made materials) and the work of his architect followers are apparent in architect-designed houses throughout the colony. This return to the traditional English rural dwellings for inspiration is marked by a simple composition and contrasts of texture, the craftsman's approach to materials and workmanship, and the use of “cottage style” to create an “Olde World” atmosphere and picturesque, informal homes. In the three-bedroom cottage at Days Bay, Wellington, which cost £1,000 (c. 1913), designed by F. E. Greenish, the “arts and crafts” style is assimilated and expressed in local terms. The exterior shape is simple–steep, double-pitched, burnt-clay tile roof with the verandah tucked under the eaves, single and grouped casement windows in white plaster walls, and natural timber balustrading and baseboards. The entrance is off the verandah through a “conservatory” into a wide hall; folding doors open into an exposed rafter living room with built-in window seat, cosy inglenook, and simple brick fireplace. The direct use of natural materials, wood, plaster, and clay, and the economical planning of structure and function all denote a major step in house design and the achievement of certain domestic qualities that form a link in the development of a national building tradition.

This period, after the First World War, saw the evolution of the second highlight in our short history–the suburban development of “picturesque romanticism” and “Garden City” landscaping. In Remuera and Epsom, Auckland, and in Fendalton and Riccarton, Christchurch, are traces of a genuine vernacular expression of family life and an integration of house and garden. By developing the whole section to gain individual privacy, full use was made of the land. With fences, hedges, and trees at the boundaries, winding drives and paths, landscaping that unfolded and blended into ivy-covered walls and rustic building materials, porches and conservatories, these homebuilders created a suburban style which had universal charm and appeal. In these suburbs fantasy was functional, the style instinctively applied, not consciously contrived. The result is the achievement of qualities that are common to all good architecture.

Basic Style 2. “L” Shape

An early example of this style is the house in Karori, Wellington (c.1914), designed by J. W. Chapman Taylor, in which the simple “white wall, casement window, tiled roof” form is stated directly without complication or pretension. But the “craftsman” simplicity was lost when the “L” shape later became popular. Superficial “featurism” was expressed in awkwardly proportioned corner and “picture” windows, corbelled gable ends in brick and timber, and heavy boxed eaves. These white-painted houses with red or grey tiled roofs sit self consciously in “seed catalogue” gardens. The front garden as “living space” had thus become an exhibition piece.

Basic Style 3. “Californian Bungalow”

The innovators in house design that now began to influence the local scene are American. On the west coast of the United States the Green brothers were pioneering a Californian “craftsman” style which evolved out of the traditional Spanish patio house (Cuthbertson House, 1897). There was an intricate vocabulary of wood details–low-pitched roofs with projecting rafters at gable ends, plank ceilings with exposed rafters and framing, interlocking timber joints, and built-in fittings. By 1913 the Los Angeles Investment Co. were publishing “inexpensive” and “practical bungalow” booklets which made an impact in New Zealand. The result was a sharp design conflict between the architect-designed cottages of the discerning client and the speculative builders' low-cost bungalows, which were readily accepted by the public. In the hands of practical builders the bungalow lost its original strength and robustness and degenerated into and “austerity Queen Anne” villa. The Morris influence had retarded the use of machine-made materials; now the economical and practical advantages of sheet materials became obvious and were used in low-cost housing, with corrugated iron for roofing, flat asbestos-cement sheets for exterior sheathing, and plaster board for internal lining. The latter was imported from North America until 1927 when local manufacturers produced an economical plaster board with pumice core.

The burnt-clay “Marseilles” tiles, favoured in architect-designed houses, were imported until 1924 when they were made locally. After 1910 concrete-masonry blocks were used for houses, and the quality and quantity improved with the new industrial mass-production techniques available in 1952. Bricks had been made in Benhar, South Otago, as early as 1876 and floor and malt-kiln tiles were produced in 1885 by McSkimming and Co., who had been established in the structural clay products industry in the 1860s.

Basic Style 4. “Spanish Mission”

In 1927 the Auckland architect R. K. Binney was lamenting “the collection of pretty Californian bungalows, Spanish mission houses and American Gothic buildings, all looking foreign, selfconscious and uncomfortable in a setting that is as English as any country out of England could be”. But it was too late for lament. “Spanish Mission” style, pioneered by Professor Wilkinson in Australia (1922) and the incredible Mizner brothers in America (mid 1920s) left its mark on even the smallest New Zealand country town. Everywhere was seen the stock builders' clichés–the simple house shape wore a red tiled or corrugated-iron roof and a “Spanish” veneer. Characteristic features were the yellow-smeared pisé stucco wall finish; the deep-tiled front porch, with triple arches and twisted Baroque columns; arcaded side verandah porches and verandahs with false parapets capped with red “Cordova” tiles, which also crowned the dovecot chimneys and front room windows; fixed window shutters, black wrought-iron grilles and balustrading; and ornate gable ends and lanterns. “Spanish mission” style was used in such public buildings as the Auckland Grammar School, Mount Eden, and the Rotorua Town Hall/Theatre.

Basic Style 5. “The State House”

The growing regimentation of life, with its decline of “personality” and “individuality”, was reflected in the extensive building programme of the State Housing Department. In planned suburbs the detached houses were–and are–finished with a variety of materials. At the present time most contractors use precut framing and sheathing, some partly prefabricated; all use standard joinery for windows, doors, and kitchen fittings as a means of economising in skilled labour and time. Some progress has been made towards repetitive production, but in the main it is still a craft industry. With the advent of the Second World War, and the shortage of building materials, economy ruled every house plan, construction and detail; minimum standards and the “illusion that equates cheapness with low first costs” became established. The Department experimented with “panel houses” (1942), prefabricated workers' dwellings, multistorey units, and flats, but visual planning remained embryonic. The departmental planners achieved a uniform suburban style based on minimum standards and on social, not personal, qualities; but it lacked individual or regional variations; simplicity, or homogeneity. Ignoring the progress towards the production on a reasoned basis of varied. satisfying, and rational housing by many countries, New Zealand remained isolated and unaware that national standards were outmoded.

Basic Styles 6 and 7. “Moderne” and “Waterfall Front”

The common denominator of all styles is the revolt against conformity. Growing out of the past, struggling to break with the past, the new forms strive to find an expression of time and place. The formative phase of modern design was confined to Europe up to the Depression, which marks the end of Victorian style as a valid cultural expression. With the “pioneers of modern design” the driving motive was an anti-Victorian revulsion expressed in a mirror image of their style. The machine-made materials and industrial techniques developed during the Victorian age were now used to communicate a new kind of visual experience. For with the collapse of the Victorian world, its rebels and social misfits became the leaders of the “modern” movement and architecture was free to develop into a genuine expression based on the use of new materials and techniques, the ideas of the pioneers, and mass revulsion against Victorianism. The impact of such overseas innovators as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Jeanneret can be traced in a number of architect-designed New Zealand houses. In builders' houses the superficial details were borrowed, but the spirit of the movement was seldom appreciated. The first development was the modification of the “L” shape to produce the “waterfall front”; this echoed the streamlined curved steps of the skyscrapers of the late twenties. The form of the house was “austerity Queen Anne”–hipped tiled roof with smaller hips over the rooms projected to the front and side. In plan all the corners were rounded steps, with steel windows, curved glass, and strong horizontal emphasis in the glazing bars and plaster bands at base and eaves. Flush panel doors with obscure glazed portholes, “Saturn shaped” light fittings, and, often, glass bricks became features of the front entrance hall. A typical “moderne” house externally was a negative expression–a leanto corrugated-iron or flat fabric roof was concealed by blank stucco walls that were carried above the roof to form a parapet and returned round the sides, stepping down to the gutter at the rear. Openings were “punched” through the walls and filled with sand-blasted doors or standard joinery. Narrow casements on either side of a fixed landscape window were common–the “Chicago” window of the nineties. Inside, the influence of the pioneer cubist painters, industrial designers, and interior decorators was more obvious in the jazzed up, cubo-eclectic furniture and decoration.

The New Pioneers 1940–60

As a result of the Second World War, New Zealanders slowly became aware of the Pacific setting and its responsibilities. Moreover, the stimulus provided by new migrants, easy travel, and the mass media–radio, television, and long-playing records have brought new styles and standards into the New Zealand home. Most potent has been the impact of the American imagination, with its variety, vigour, vulgarity, and creativity, as expressed in the technical and material proficiency of the products of the Hollywood “dream factory” and in the flood of glossy magazines. These influences may be discerned dimly in the local carbon copies of “ranch houses”, “Split levels”, and “West Coast Pacifica”. Standards of construction and sanitation, materials and techniques, mechanical equipment, and domestic comfort have steadily improved. With the trend towards self-sufficiency in local manufacturing, a wide range of materials and finishes have become available–veneered plywoods. wood and composite sheets, patterned concrete blocks and bricks, metal doors, windows, and screens, trough section roofing and wall cladding, insulation and plastics, floor coverings, furniture, and furnishings. Minimum building by-laws and town planning regulations, together with the resale requirements of valuers and appraisers, materialised in the house of the man in the street and the prefabricated low-cost house which now featured bigger windows, fully glazed doors, metal sun awnings and venetian blinds, wall-to-wall carpets, and carports to house. Nevertheless, there are signs of the emergence of something that can be classified as basically “New Zealand”. Cultural life in this country over the last 15 years has shown a “slow advance of civilisation”. A national feeling of separate identity is growing which has found expression in the arts–in a deepening appreciation of those aspects of life from which a national culture emerges.

Towards an Indigenous Architecture–“Space, Light, and Nature”

It was now possible for the younger architects to weld their new technical knowledge of space and planning concepts on to a deeper sympathy with nature and a truer understanding of the past. With renewed delight in special sensation, in form and proportion, and in alliance with nature, they have designed and built experimental houses in which planning and construction are inseparable and governed by an economy of means; they have also sought to achieve a genuine New Zealand habitat and in doing so have expressed the dominant characteristic of modern architecture–the new freedom of free-flowing space in buildings that are one with nature. Something close to the ideal home for the average New Zealand family is built empirically by unselfconscious builders; with some of the freedom won by the pioneer architects, some understanding of fashions, prejudices, and the urge to beautify, the tradition of homebuilding could evolve in response to new, less formal. living habits.

“New Pioneer” Homes–Indigenous Buildings

The sophisticated urban style of the “new puritans”, the “international stylists”, had a revivifying effect on modern architecture but few local followers. Ernest A. Plischke, a virtually unique New Zealand exponent of this style, has had a wide influence on local architects but few imitators (Sutch house, Wellington, 1960). This austere style presents the real and basic problem of modern architecture; laymen object to the formal a-human quality of perfectionist buildings which are remote from historic experience–planting, warm-coloured textures, and “exotic” furnishings relieve the effect but do not eliminate it. The philosophy of the machine for living was briefly accepted by “progressive people” of the thirties, but houses must take into account and grow out of specifically human values, spiritual, emotional, intellectual–they must express “tradition”. Every historical style that has been a valid cultural expression has had its roots in local tradition–“folk architecture” expressed the community life of its age. The local statement of this problem and the development of indigenous buildings can be traced in the following architect- and student- designed houses and seen in later builders'adaptions:

1. The houses of Paul Pascoe, Canterbury, and Cedric Firth, Wellington, of the early forties, translated the international style of the thirties into a timber vernacular. The detailing was simple but heavy, with large areas of glass; as there were no verandahs, or only slight links with their surroundings, the houses stood apart from nature.

2. The next step was taken in Robin Simpson's own house, Remuera, Auckland (1939). The traditional vertical boards and batten wall sheathing were continued in a parapet to enclose visually the terrace of the combined living/dining room, the “most uncompromisingly contemporary house of 1942” (Firth).

3. The continuity of old and new is obvious in Vernon A. Brown's Roper house, Mission Bay, Auckland (1938); c/f. Anderson homestead, Omatua, Hawke's Bay, c. 1862–Here there are similar rusticated weatherboards on light timber frame, with rooms at either end of the verandah with 12-pane windows, two intermediate posts, and French doors. In the Kidd House, St. Heliers; Lemon House, St. Stephens Avenue, Parnell, Auckland (1945), Hoffman house, Bell Road, Remuera, Auckland (1946)–the tradition which persisted for a hundred years is traced, and developed.

4. R. A. Toy's house in Epsom, Auckland (1948), marks the maturity of the local expression of the modern architectural idiom welded to early elegant “Regency” tradition. Subtle use is made of zoning for family activities. The living area upstairs is open, with extensive views, and imaginative use is made of light and space. The separate sleeping rooms set below have the warmth of the site and building shelter provide the privacy of cosy, individual cells. There is an organic relationship between the house and the section, and an expression of the twin principles of man's controlling Nature, by his architectural control over materials and techniques and of his being one with Nature.

   In Wellington the “demonstration house” (1948) of the Architectural Centre group of enthusiasts, developed the enclosed patio on a difficult “ridge” section.

5. The decade after the Second World War saw the evolution of the “Ecole des Beaux-Arts”, the English “arts and crafts”, American “shingle style”, and international “functional” traditions of architectural design. The essential characteristics which emerged represent a change in emphasis from the substantial pre-war architect-designed houses. From the “early pioneering” lightness and simplicity developed the heavier post and beam “stick style”, and a later search for robust solidity and elegant decoration which reflect a Mediterranean or Japanese image of the house.

   The pioneering work of V. A. Brown and R. H. Toy was followed by a students' group, later Group Architects. The trend can be traced in the work of these individuals (perhaps typical of many of the younger architects), particularly their two experimental speculative houses in Northboro' Road, Takapuna (1949); houses for Bruce Rotherham, Devonport (1950), Miss Maisie Smith (1951); Bruce Catley, Milford North (1952); W. C. Rotherham, Glendowie (1952); R. B. Thompson, Castor Bay (1953); Skelton “studio” house, Belmont (1953); J. F. Mallitte, Takapuna (1953); Miss Zena Abbot, Blockhouse Bay (1955); Dr Kemble-Welch, Whangarei (1955); and the prefabricated house, Western Springs Carnival (1953).

6. As the Auckland-qualified architects returned to their home towns to carry on their profession, small houses that showed a radical development of the traditional plans began to appear throughout the country, and by 1960 “modern” characteristics were appearing in builders' “parades of homes”. The architects' idiom was passing into the builders' vernacular.

7. Still one of the best contemporary expressions of this trend was the house designed by R. A. Toy for his family, in which the continuity of inherited tastes and attitudes can be seen without forcing the evidence (cf. the “Regency” St. Paul's Vicarage, Eden Crescent, Auckland, c. 1865). This is a traditional building in the true sense of the word, not in form but in spirit; no less modern, but more–a genuine New Zealand expression of homebuilding.

   Today, therefore, the architectural, unobtrusive feeling for materials and unpretentious means, which marks the work of the “new pioneer” architects represents a hopeful step in the development of a truly New Zealand style of domestic architecture.

by James Garrett, A.N.Z.I.A., Architect, Auckland.

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