Roger Walker New Zealand Institute of Architects Gold Medal 2016 Roger Walker New Zealand Institute of Architects Gold Medal 2016 B Published by the New Zealand Contents Institute of Architects 2017 Introduction 2 Editor: John Walsh Gold Medal Citation 4 In Conversation: Roger Walker with John Walsh 6 Contributors: Andrew Barrie, Terry Boon, Pip Cheshire, Comments Patrick Clifford, Tommy Honey, Gordon Andrew Barrie Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom 40 Moller and Gus Watt. Tommy Honey Who Dares Wins 42 Gordon Moller Fun, Roger-style 46 All plans and sketches © Roger Walker. Patrick Clifford Critical Architecture 50 Portrait of Roger Walker on page 3 by Gus Watt Reggie Perrin on Willis Street 52 Simon Wilson. Cartoon on page 62 Terry Boon A Radical Response 54 by Malcolm Walker. Pip Cheshire Ground Control to Roger Walker 58 Design: www.inhouse.nz Cartoon by Malcolm Walker 62 Printer: Everbest Printing Co. China © New Zealand Institute of Architects 2017 This publication is copyright. No part may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. ISBN 978-0-473-38089-2 1 The Gold Medal is the highest honour awarded by the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA). It is given to an architect who, over the course of a career (thus far!), has designed a substantial body of outstanding work that is recognised as such by the architect’s peers. Gold Medals Introduction for career achievement have been awarded since 1999 and, collectively, the recipients constitute a group of the finest architects to have practised in New Zealand over the past half century. In 2016, the NZIA Gold Medal was awarded to Wellington architect Roger Walker. 2 3 Few figures in the history of New Zealand waterfront (1968) popularised the use of Left: Glen Stanley House, Island Bay, architecture are as synonymous with a place white concrete-block walls and steeply pitched Wellington (1991). and time as is Roger Walker with Wellington roofs, and numerous houses on the Capital’s in the 1960s and ‘70s. In those years vertiginous hills profoundly influenced Wellingtonians only had to look around to see perceptions of the New Zealand suburban that the times were changing: the Capital’s house, and prompted much imitation. dramatic topography was a perfect setting for Chief among these radical designs was the Roger’s flamboyant geometry. His buildings Britten House (1973), an exuberant built were playful and idiosyncratic assemblages manifesto that appeared on the cover of The of turrets and towers, cylinders and cubes, Architectural Review. Even more celebrated, portholes and pyramids. Roger’s houses because of its public visibility and larger presented a bewildering array of faces to the scale, was Park Mews (1973), the apartment world and roofs to the sky. This was a wildly building on the main road to the Hataitai Citation inventive architecture by a determinedly free Tunnel that reads as a village of little houses. spirit, and it launched a career that has always Park Mews championed communitarian been characterised by adventurous endeavour togetherness in the face of the suburban and sustained by resilient optimism. alienation that Roger felt so keenly in his Hamilton childhood. The building was also his Roger’s drive and his resolve never to be protest against the prevailing uniformity and bored may at least partially be attributed to anonymity of multi-unit residential buildings: his upbringing in mid-century Hamilton who wants to identify their home as the fifth suburbia, an environment he found secure window from the left on the third floor of the but circumscribed. Fort Nyte, the sizeable second block? and illicit structure he built as a child in the backyard of the family home, prefigured the Although his base was in Wellington, Roger’s provocative architecture to come, just as his reputation became national. He had already youthful drawings of fast cars expressed his designed St Mary’s Church, Taumarunui interest in design and anticipated his devotion (1968) while at Calder Fowler & Styles; in to the Ferrari marque. Towards the end of the short order Roger designed the terminal at 1960s, not long out of Architecture School, Whakatane Airport (1971), the Centrepoint Roger announced his precocious talent with complex in Masterton (1971) and the sustained attempt to marry bespoke design and Papakaˉinga housing in Wellington. His the design of the Wellington Club, undertaken Sandcastle Motel on the Kapiti Coast (1972). and standardised production. The innovative entry into the post-earthquake Breathe as a new recruit of Calder Fowler & Styles. There was a chain of ice-cream shops in the Vintage Homes project included the house Urban Village initiative in Christchurch This was an extraordinary opportunity for a Bay of Plenty (the Cream Cans, 1974-76), that Roger, ambitiously, entered into the was a runner-up in the international design young graduate, and surely one of the more buildings at Rainbow Springs in Rotorua 1981 Ideal Homes Exhibition in Milton competition. incongruous pairings of client and design (1974-81), the Waitomo Caves Visitor Centre Keynes, England. architect in New Zealand architectural history. (1980), and staff accommodation at the Roger keeps going, and keeps looking Roger took his chance with breathtaking Chateau Tongariro (1982). In a conservative As his career progressed, Roger continued forward. He works as hard as he ever did, his confidence and, after a period of juggling society, an unconventional architect had to design individual homes, but increasingly curiosity is as strong as it ever was, and his his day job and private commissions (he has become a marketable brand; just by being he turned his attention to medium-density determination to respond in a meaningful way always had a huge appetite for hard work), he himself, Roger was in tune with the zeitgeist. housing. He has always been a skilful space to the building challenges of our cities and started his own practice. planner, a quality recognised by many suburbs remains undiminished. He is fondly The pace of Roger’s early career was developers who have commissioned him regarded and respected by his clients and his Over the next decade, Roger designed a exhausting and perhaps unsustainable, but, over the course of several decades. Latterly, professional peers. He is a worthy recipient of series of epoch-defining buildings. A pair of undaunted, he then started his own housing Roger has designed multi-unit residential the 2016 New Zealand Institute of Architects small amenity structures on the Wellington company, Vintage Homes, which was to be a projects in New South Wales and Queensland, Gold Medal. NZ INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS 4 5 John: Roger, shall we start at the beginning We had the quarter-acre section but, as you Right: Childhood sketches by Roger and stop at way stations along the journey? say, we didn’t kick a football around. We drove Walker of a suburban Roger: Pause for a cup of tea? a go-cart around at high speed and churned house and a fast car. up the lawn. My parents were enormously Or something… You’ve spoken, at various forgiving. My brother and I built a hut in the times and engagingly, about growing up backyard which is semi-famous now. That was in Hamilton, which you have memorably my first encounter with town planners. described as a superphosphate society built on a swamp. Your interests were drawing and This was the celebrated Fort Nyte. making things, not rugby union. Yes, I built it when I must have been going Roger Walker with John Walsh with John Walker Roger I was a bit of a frail child. through a slight misogynistic period – there was a big sign, ‘Girls Keep Out’. The hut got Were you an only child? higher and higher. It started off because a No, I was the eldest of three. primary school was being built next door and there was a mountain of offcuts just over the What did your parents do? fence. I asked if I could have some and the My dad was a chemist and my mother was builder told me I could have the lot because a doctor’s receptionist before she retired. it would save him having to pay to have them Did you already think suburbia was boring? My brother Gavin and I were into cycles. In those days once women started having taken away. Well, I had problems growing up in suburbia. We would have an argument with mum and a family they stopped working, or left paid I couldn’t understand why a pile of loose dad who would find us 20 miles out towards employment, I should say. I was born under Mum was quite accepting of this structure building materials and bricks would arrive on Morrinsville and say, “All is forgiven, come a picture of the Queen. I had a very straight, which grew organically in the veggie garden. sites and then morph into identical houses. home, your tea’s getting cold.” Then we got semi-religious upbringing. It was a little It ended up being quite hostile in the sense into go-carts and trolleys. stressful in that friends were not encouraged it had a 44-gallon drum on the roof with a This was the 1950s? to come home, so even though I had some shanghai. Perhaps this was a way of attacking Yes, in the suburb of Fairfield. It was classic Sorry, I distracted myself… The vocational dodgy cousins I was forced to spend time with suburbia. Because it was the tallest building brick-and-tile suburbia. I had developed a bit guidance officer said, “You can’t design cars In Conversation them because they were family.