MLADEN BIZUMIC FROM CUBE TO BALL (CHAPTER 1)

My interest in this project began in February 2000 after being invited to a party in Brooklyn, Wellington. I remember taking a taxi from downtown toward Brooklyn and on the way passing a house which instantly impressed me. I asked the driver to stop and let me out. I remember the setting sun casting long shadows and the birds singing their evening song. I stood there admiring the simplicity of the straight lines of this unfamiliar house, its mixture of stone and timber expressing something intelligent and elegant yet sensitive. I saw a modernist house that was part of its environment but at the same time in tension with it. This tension resulted in the house’s structural concept and imbued it with a sculptural quality that seemed rather rare. Finally when I reached the party I was told that what I had seen was The Sutch House designed by Ernst Plischke.

As I learnt more, Plischke’s story started to interest me. During and after the WWII, modernist influence spread beyond . Ernst Plischke was only one of a number of émigré architects who came to . Born in in 1903, Plischke arrived in Wellington in 1939 accompanied by his wife Anna, after fleeing the Nazi occupation. Before his arrival he had studied architecture with and acquired a considerable reputation in Europe. The relocation to New Zealand was never going to be easy for a man who was, by all accounts, obstinate and, as the Sutch House still demonstrates, uncompromising. What he experienced on his arrival in Wellington was a culture shock. Plischke was never able to register as an architect in New Zealand due to his refusal to sit the Royal Institute of British Architects examinations. Working in partnership with registered architect Cedric Firth enabled him to get around this. Shortly after his arrival in Wellington, Plischke began working on NZ Housing projects such as the Orakei Multi-Unit development in Auckland (1939-41). He worked feverishly on many projects including the glass-curtained Massey House (1951-57), which was Wellington’s first modern skyscraper. He eventually became a prominent voice in New Zealand architecture circles through his writing and lectures and his work. He left New Zealand in 1964. Mladen Bizumic

FROM CUBE TO BALL is a three-part project to be shown in Auckland (Sue Crockford Gallery, February 2010), Wellington (Adam Art Gallery, October 2010) and Vienna (in 2011). This is Mladen Bizumic’s sixth solo exhibition at the Sue Crockford Gallery. It is inspired by the legacy of the modernist architect Ernst Plischke in New Zealand. Each of the four works in this exhibition draws on a different architectural project done by Plischke in New Zealand but injecting them with independent life. Holding a Bird in Your Hand and Feeling the Heartbeat (1st Draft) is a sound installation inspired by the lights which Plischke designed for St. Martin's Church, Christchurch. The electric bulbs have been replaced by speakers that pipe native bird songs. The bird songs have also been transcribed/orchestrated by the Wellington-based composer Hermione Johnson to be played by an orchestra at a later date. The Walls We Build (As Thin As Paper) is a series of collage-photographs taken from the Massey House portfolio, the building designed by Ernst Plischke and Cedric Firth. Each photograph has been re-designed; the added patterns activate and introduce the new space in-between the viewer and the photograph. This is accompanied by the graphic work This Stone Was Laid, which shows fragments of the lettered stone laid to celebrate the inauguration of the Massey House. Funded by the NZ Meat and The NZ Diary Boards, The Massey House, built in 1957, was the first modern skyscraper built in Wellington. Satin and Air Composition is a 1:1 floor plan of a typical apartment in Dixon Street Flats, Wellington designed by Gordon Wilson and Ernst Plischke in 1947. The hard-edge structure of the apartment floor plan has been softened by the use of satin whereas the original concrete floor had been covered by (nothing but) the air. Lizi Mud-McBane