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 Willis is an architect still active in Christchurch. He designed this house for himself back in the 60s and still lives here. It’s a crisp, modernist Scandinavian-style family house, clearly much-loved and a great, intact example of the Christchurch Style. The design owes a lot to Miles Warren and W&M, 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.

Turns out, there’s a little bit of Miles in the Hutt. For Wellingtonians who like a little Christchurch Modern, we present the first MJ Foster House – five years before going the whole hog in Havelock North, MJ commissioned this Lower Hutt pixie as a test run.

…continue reading 55 Orr Crescent. MJ Foster House. Warren & Mahoney.

After returning from Japan, and prior to moving back to Christchurch in 1956, Peter was in partnership with Robert A. Heaney in Timaru. This is the first house we’ve seen of the partnership – they were recent graduates and mostly designed woolstores – and places it as early-to-mid 1950s.

…continue reading 20 Connolly St Geraldine. Stafford House. Beaven & Heaney.

A good house, essentially untouched since the 1950s, is hard to find. And this simple, low-pitched number is an understated treasure with a great view. Air the place out, sell the chandeliers, reinstate the fireplace, and move right in.

…continue reading 24 Macmillan Ave. Griffiths, Moffat & Partners.