Originally published in Bay Buzz, Issue 12 May 10th 2013
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| Herertaunga, A carved House of Taradale |
How far the house and culture of home making has evolved, from our ancestral cave dwellers to Grand Designs and other weekly exposes. Through the ages, the house in whatever form has stood as shelter and the focus of family life and ritual. If placed in multiple groupings it becomes community. An integral part of being human.
The capacity
to dream has expanded the notion of house over the millennia. Perhaps taken for
granted as a place of the day-to-day, the house is far from an ordinary idea.
How the New
Zealand idea of house has evolved as a cultural artifact is an interesting
story.
The whare of
native origin was low tech, built of local material and skill. Infused with the
function of shelter and story telling. Taking over where the cloak left off as
a mediator between the body and an environment from which comfort was hard won.
A cloak with foundations, conceived as an extension of the body in space.
Followed by the ubiquitous
utilitarian cottages and sheds. By necessity of place and time, simple in form
and function.
The European
and other settlers brought with them also tradition and preconception of house.
A roof, four walls, a front entrance, a rear entrance, some windows, a roof
shaped so, a hearth. Composed and constructed using the technology andstyle of
the time – Victorian, Arts and Crafts, Modern, Post Modern etc. The story has
grown, yet ask a child to draw a house and what do they unequivocally produce?
The fusion of
mana whenua ideas, farmyard utility, immigrant memory, fantasy, available
resources, technology and skills have coalesced into what has come to define NZ
domestic architecture.
The house
reaches deep into our consciousness through time to our collective memory. The
links deeper perhaps than we realize as we visit yet another open home. A
loaded concept, the house is symbolic of our psyche and an expression of our
self; but at the same time a status symbol and a means to economic advantage.
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| Ngamatea Homestead by John Scott |
What is a
house in Hawkes Bay?
In the popular
mind, the image still remains of house in landscape, not house in community. Is
that the Hawke’s Bay dream? This image of solitude harks to our pioneer days
perhaps, but is also an image tied closely to our consumer culture and dreams
of success. House and success are entwined as a measure of status, an
expression of self and wealth.
So, the house
is much more than just shelter from the elements. It is hard to disentangle
what is a complex web of economics, supply chains and politics that has shaped
our idea of house. The cave, with life centered around the fire, has become
life centered around television, market economics, potential capital gain and
image. The hunt with spear has been replaced with a weekend looking at open
homes.
Real estate is
the one basket most Kiwis put all their eggs in, an approach that continues to
have numerous risks.
No matter what
part of the economic cycle, the NZ psyche is all about house ownership. Dinner
party snippets re latest valuations, the addition, the choice of bathroom tile,
reverberate throughout the nation. Either we are making money, losing it or on
the way to either outcome via our ideas about one of the most basic human
needs, shelter.
The majority
of the Bay house building starts are in the new suburbs such as Arataki,
Frimley, etc. They generally lack that specific sense of uniqueness or place
that one would expect as a product of Hawke’s Bay climate and culture. Perhaps
if houses were the basis of suburbs rather than vice versa it may allow for a
more overt sense of uniqueness in our suburbs.
If there was
one thing I couldn’t give up in my Hawke’s Bay house it would be the ability to
effortlessly move from outdoors to in. The Hawke’s Bay house modulates the
space between interior and exterior. At times acting to blur the two; at other
times giving precedence to one over the other as clearly the better choice for
habitation at any particular time. The extremes of season managed via intelligent
design. It enables inclusion of nature where it can and turns its back when
necessary. It is exactly whatever we need it to be.
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| Te Mata House by Stevens Lawson Architects |
What are we
building?
A survey of
NZIA National awards over ten years shows there to be four winnersin Hawke’s
Bay (??). Of those projects only two of them for houses, and one of those an
enduring architecture award for a house built in 1974. That houses have only
been national award winners twice over the last years is interesting.
One is the Te
mata house by Auckland firm Stevens Lawson;the other is the Warren and Mahoney
designed Foster House in Havelock North completed in 1974.
Both these
projects fit the stereotype of large house in the landscape. Both houses
carefully modulate and control the relationship to the outdoors. Outdoor rooms
are created in both projects. Rooms suited to Hawke’s Bay summer. Interiors
imbued with warmth for winter frosts. Carefully placed in the landscape.
Exquisitely crafted. Worth well over the million dollar mark. Iconic New Zealand
architecture.
Local Awards
are much more generous to residential architecture but not at the expense of
standalone dwellings rural or semi rural in nature or beach houses. Exceptions would be Rod Drurys town
house in Havelock North a 2012 winner. Of the approximately (need to confirm Numbers)residential building
consents for new houses built in the Bay annually, dependent on economic
conditions, there is generally a very low turnout for buildings designed by architects.
The competition provided by Horvath et al proving too much for the average
punter trying to maximize his square metres in pavalova paradise.
The majority
of New Zealand housing was built in a couple of key periods -- 1920’s, post-war
1950’s and 1970’s. The new suburbs created in those eras were not the sole
domain of the group home builders although they dis have a market share. The
quantity of architect-designed homes in the 60’s and 70’s was quite a
remarkable compared to today. The likes of John Scott, Barry Sweet, Peter
Holland, Len Hoogerberg, Guy Natusch and Paris Magdalinos were all busy in the
new suburbs of the Bay building ‘dream’ homes not just for doctors and lawyers,
but for ordinary people. They continued a tradition inherited from the like of
Walter Chapman- Taylor LA Louis Hay and others.
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| Typical Hawkes Bay Suburb 2013 |
A generation
later, the game has completely changed. A drive through any of the new suburbs
will illustrate quite clearly that ‘design’ has been put on the backburner.
Cookie cutter cottages inhabiting cookie cutter streets provide the market with
adequate shelter, with streets providing plenty of room to maneuver for cars
but could be anywhere.
Designer
houses are left as an elite luxury to park next to the Audi. Learning from the
experiments of the past seems largely lost. The trickledown effect, if any, to
the suburb makers has seemingly dried up.
What should we
have learned from the pioneers of house design in the Bay? What makes a John
Scott house still a sought after proposition? What makes a stay at any of the Blackbarn houses so popular?
A sense of the aesthetic and beauty. An understanding of how a building might
manage that interface between human need for shelter and dream. Celebration of
the landscape and modulation of the interior/exterior experience.
Get the basics
right in our houses, perhaps the city will follow.
The challenge for the housing industry,
territorial authorities included, is to somehow get back to where we were and,
when considering an opportunity to build, reinsert some of the dream into what
is on offer to the mass market.
The real
estate agents as usual tap directly into the universal vein – Living the
Hawke’s Bay Dream … Paradise in the Hills of Havelock North … More than just a
place to live.
How that
gets translated into an affordable model is the key.
It is the
business of the architect to harmonise the world of necessity with the world of
romance. A Home is not a ‘machine to live in’ as some of the Moderns claim. A
Home is an extension of Ourselves and just as man does not live by bread alone
so his Home must have a Soul as well as a Body.” James Walter Chapman-Taylor
