If you like Christchurch Modern then, by God, you’ll like the book, I never met a straight line I didn’t like. This 440 page beauty includes 12 homes in the Christchurch Style illustrated by photographer Mary Gaudin and includes original plans and archival images. As Architecture NZ says, it’s “like water to the soul of the thirsty architect.”

…continue reading I never met a straight line I didn’t like.

Bad news. Sad news. The great architect Maurice Mahoney has died in his 90th year. When Maurice teamed up with Miles Warren in 1958 to establish New Zealand’s greatest 20th century design partnership, the two architects were unstoppable. They revolutionised architecture in New Zealand, developing the distinctive ‘Christchurch Style’ which, let’s face it, was the Warren & Mahoney style.

…continue reading Thank you, Maurice Edward Mahoney.

A low-pitched survivor built in ’69 from Canadian Oregon and trusty concrete blocks in the modern ranch style.  The interior is a masterclass in spatial arrangement with Don using partial-height walls, glass partitions and his trademark sliding shoji screens.

…continue reading 68 Merrin St. Macaulay House. Don Cowey

Don Cowey designed this  Mt Pleasant house for his mum in 1953, He was straight out of architecture school, aged 25, and built it together with his mates Allan Mitchener and Allan Wild. Sixty years later it was sadly demolished due to earthquake damage and lovingly reimagined by Bridget and Duval O’Neill.

…continue reading 127 Major Hornibrook Rd. Cowey House / O’Neill House

Oh dear. This abandoned, sad-looking orphan was once a striking, modern home with a mix of vertical and horizontal timber weatherboards and a great big Oamaru stone fireplace at its heart. C’mon, look into those big, pleading eyes (or windows) and say it’s not worth saving!?

…continue reading 15a Garden Rd. Peter Beaven.

Interesting. An early Peter Beaven design -prior to his Scandinavian phase and long before his  jaunty ‘gothic’ modernism –  uncharacteristically riffing off the international style with a flat roof and living room wall of glass. Sweet, original condition too.

…continue reading 299 Lake Terrace Rd. Peter Beaven.

This house is FOR RENT. Just saying.  It sits at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, in a pocket of what must be the city’s highest concentration of homes in the Christchurch Style, yet Mitchener’s 1964 design stands apart as a great example of the breed and one of Christchurch’s best small houses of the time.

…continue reading 31 Newbridge Pl. Messervy House. Allan Mitchener.

Peter Beaven was never conventional: in 1975, aged 50, he disbanded his successful Christchurch practice, packed a suitcase and moved to London where he worked alone from a bedsit. During that time he designed these six houses in the Christchurch Style, evolving ideas he developed a decade earlier in Christchurch’s Tonbridge Mews and Wellington’s Habitat Housing. Bravo.

…continue reading London N6. Tile Kiln Studios. Peter Beaven.

Ernest Kalnins is a man for whom we have scant information. He was an Austrian designer, artist and (non-registered) architect who designed this family home on upper Clifton Hill for Dulcie and Tom Flint, owners of a large Stationery shop on Manchester Street. In the 60s, the top of Clifton Hill was a sparsely populated, almost agricultural, bohemian suburb with some of the best views in Christchurch.

…continue reading 60 Panorama Rd. Flint House. Ernest Kalnins.

Huh? A 1937 reinforced concrete farmhouse with clear Corbusian and Bauhaus influences, hidden on the coast south of Kaikora? The Wilding property, now an Angus beef farmstead called Te Mania, was built by some pretty hip graziers.

Gavin Francis Willis is an architect still active in Christchurch. He designed this beautiful house for himself back in the 60s and still lives here (and who can blame him). It’s a crisp, modernist Scandinavian-style family home, clearly much-loved and an excellent, intact expression of the Christchurch Style. The design owes a lot to Miles Warren and Holger Henning Hansen, but if you’re going to steal, you may as well steal from the best.

…continue reading 45 Chepstow Ave. Willis House. Gavin Willis.

This is the second house S’Miles designed for his buddy Garth Gould on a sunny spot above Halswell Quarry. The first house, its neighbour, was sold and subsequently messed with quite a bit, but this one is very original (kitchen and family room aside) with lots of good W&M detail. Garth talks about the old days below.