Warren & Mahoney in Christchurch 1
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ITINERARY n.15 NOT ON MAP 7 8 9 10 12 4 3 2 1 13 5 11 6 Photo: Mannering & Associates Warren & Mahoney in Christchurch 1 Biography In a 1966 article on Warren & Mahoney’s work in the British journal Architectural Design, Norman F. Miles Warren was born in Sheppard wrote of Christchurch: “This city, the most conservative in a fairly conservative country, has Christchurch in 1929. After in its recent public and domestic buildings shown a direction which, if pursued and developed should working for Cecil Wood and make it a concrete example of what current planning and design theories propound.” This direction was several other Christchurch vigorously pursued, and the flowering of architectural invention in Christchurch in the 1960s became architects, Warren studied a high point in the history of New Zealand architecture. The “Christchurch School” involved a host of architecture at the University architects - Peter Beaven, Don Donnithorne, Charles Thomas, and Trengrove & Marshall were key figures, of Auckland, eventually but the scene was dominated by Warren & Mahoney. working at the London County Council where he Miles Warren carried the seeds of W&M’s phenomenal growth back to his home town in 1954, returning was exposed to British “New from Britain with the ideas then percolating around the avant-garde “New Brutalist” movement. Joining Brutalism”. forces with Maurice Mahoney, the pair found a point of intersection between the concern for truth-to- Maurice Mahoney was materials and structural expression that characterized Brutalism, and the low-key, Kiwi-fied commitment born in Christchurch, and to “straightforwardness” that obsessed many young architects here in NZ. Side-stepping the lightweight, like Warren trained at the rationalized wooden structures that dominated the thinking of the Group, W&M developed a tectonic and Canterbury Arch. Assn’s material vocabulary that derived from New Brutalism but reflected the more solid architectural heritage of Atelier. Mahoney, after the Christchurch context. This vocabulary appeared seemingly fully-formed in Warren’s first building: the working in a number of Dorset Street Flats. The astonishing skill behind W&M’s early work is demonstrated in the effortlessness Christchurch firms, joined with which they could adapt this domestic vocabulary to different building types – the perpendicular with Warren to take over the volume of the Christchurch College chapel and the spreading landscape of the Crematorium are each practice of G. T. Lucas, with only one step removed from Dorset Street. With the addition of pre-cast concrete and more adventurous the firm of Warren & Mahoney roof structures to the palette, W&M were able to create much more complex buildings, such as the being established in 1958 for Canterbury Student Union and Christchurch Town Hall. the Dental School project. W&M became a remarkable success story. They rode the wave of the post-war economic boom and The practice achieved quickly stepped up to large scale work. Winning the high-profile competition for the Christchurch Town remarkably rapid success, Hall in 1966 cemented their position among NZ’s premier firms. In the same year – less than a decade quickly moving up in the after the firm was established – W&M also won the American Institute of Architects’ Pan Pacific Citation, an scale and complexity of their projects and earning four award also given to such luminaries as Kenzo Tange and Harry Seidler. By the time the Town Hall opened NZIA Gold Medals between in 1973, much of W&M’s work was high-rise commercial buildings for developer clients. These changing 1959 and 1973. Warren briefs and the sense that Modernism was exhausted led W&M to shed their earlier approach and explore received a CBE in 1974, a the postmodernist language that was rising in Europe and America, a shift that paralleled that of many of knighthood in 1986, and in Warren’s international contemporaries, including fellow former Brutalists such as James Stirling. 1995 was made one of the 20 Through the 1980s, W&M’s early work was regarded with some unease, critics suggesting that the living members of the Order Christchurch Town Hall was the moment the firm really found its feet. With Kiwi architects now eagerly of NZ. He received the NZIA reworking mid-century modernism, W&M’s early work is again revered, and it is now the firm’s post- Gold Medal in 2000. modern work that tends to be passed over in silence: even the recent New Territories monograph, Mahoney retired in 1992 and assembled by W&M itself, includes key projects from the 1960s and early-70s but almost nothing from the Warren (officially at least) in 1980s. It may be another decade before the merits of this later work are again recognised. Andrew Barrie 1994. ReferenceReference as: as: Andrew Andrew Barrie, Barrie, “Warren “Warren & & Mahoney Mahoney in in Christchurch Christchurch 1”, 1”, Itinerary Itinerary No. No. 15, 15, Block: Block: The The Broadsheet Broadsheet of of the the Auckland Auckland Branch Branch of of thethe New New Zealand Zealand Institute Institute of of Architects, Architects, No. No. 7, 7, 2008. 2008. 1 1956-57 2 1958-59 3 1960 4 1960-61 Dorset Street Flats Dental Nurses Training School Carlton Mill Road Flats M. B. Warren House 2-12 Dorset Street, City 888 Colombo Street, City 64 Carlton Mill Road, City 9 Queens Ave, Fendalton These eight flats were produced for three young Photo: Mannering & Associates bachelor owners (including Warren and Mahoney’s first Warren himself), each having official project, this complex one flat to occupy and the consists of two complete Following on from the Dorset Designed for Warren’s parents, others available to rent. children’s dental clinics, an Street project, W&M produced this house is the best known Designed before W&M was administration block, and a number of blocks of flats of a series of projects later officially established, it employs a block of classrooms. The along similar lines. Flats in dubbed the “pixie” houses. the ideas he brought back from project set the pattern for the these low-rise structures were Picking up on both historical Britain. The result is a simple firm’s early public buildings all constructed in the same cottage patterns and then but elegant composition of – clearly articulated planning, vocabulary of load-bearing contemporary Danish models, concrete block, in-situ RC floor extensive use of concrete concrete block and exposed in- these houses were composed structures, full-height openings block, shallow and flat roofs situ concrete. They were made of crisp boxes of concrete and low-pitched timber-framed detailed with no eaves to create eminently livable by recessed block, with punched openings roofs. The first conscious use prismatic volumes. However, balconies and north-facing, and no eaves or verges on of concrete block and fairface expressed steel portals and lushly-planted private gardens their gabled roofs. At the M.B. concrete inside a NZ house, very large windows give enclosed with concrete block Warren House, each main the building was dubbed “Fort the project a lightness and walls. See Home & Building room is surmounted by a Dorset” by scandalized locals. delicacy that stands in contrast June 1961. steeply-pitched wooden roof See Home & Building Jan.1959 to W&M’s later, more solid Other housing blocks include – this breaking down of the and Sept. 1959, and Arch. work. The project received the R. Hysop Flats (1960-61) house into small volumes, each Design Dec. 1961. an NZIA Gold Medal in 1959. at 324 Oxford Terrace, the J.J. with its own roof, was later Take a look at W&M’s 1973 The complex is now a private Connor Flats (1960-61) on extended by Ian Athfield and Dorset Towers – two mid-rise academy. Papanui Road, and the B.A. Roger Walker (creating what apartment towers – next door at See Home & Blg. June 1960 Broderick Townhouses (1962- came to be described as the 110 Park Terrace. and Arch. Review Feb. 1961. 64) at 40 Rhodes Street. “noddy” houses). 5 1960-61 6 1962-89 7 1962-63 8 1962-64 Chapman Block Harewood Memorial Christ’s College Architect’s Office & Flat Gardens & Crematorium Christchurch Wool Exchange Rolleston Avenue, City 65 Cambridge Street, City 109 Johns Roads, Harewood 7 Whiteleigh Avenue, Riccarton Built to house both the W&M office and Miles Warren’s flat, Located on a large flat site Described by Warren as the building was gradually in a semi-industrial area, New Zealand’s first Brutalist extended as W&M grew, with the project’s key element is Located adjacent to the building, this is a four- Miles’ flat being displaced first a large rectangular garden showgrounds, this building storey stack of laboratories, onto the roof, and then into the enclosed on three sides by was designed as a venue for classrooms and support garden at the rear. The building concrete block walls. The wool auctions, sales taking spaces. Squeezed between two became hub for a series of glass-walled chapel sits within place on only 10 days a year. existing structures, the building W&M projects on adjacent this enclosed space, and the The main building employs makes a number of gestures sites, including the Robin crematorium functions are a square plan organized to its context – the side walls Smith Photography Studio at discretely accommodated almost symmetrically around a are finished in brick veneer, 59 Cambridge Terrace (1970). “beyond” the far wall. The diagonal axis. The auctioneer’s and the arrangement of precast In 2006 Warren generously bold butterfly roof of the podium stands at the origin elements on the main façades gifted the building, now chapel and canopy float over of this axis, and arranged reflect the scale, rhythm, and occupied design-related firms this composition of walls, this around this is a steeply-raked colors of Cecil Wood’s adjacent including Athfield Architects, seemingly simple composition auditorium.