Don Donnithorne
Don believes his work gives people “relaxation and contentment, not drastic hallucinations”. The aim is to achieve privacy away from the outside world, creating special spaces within the home, which lend to the feeling of a retreat. Don is now well into his 80s, but is happily working and drives around in a Lancia Fulvia Zagato. Respect.
Don’s buildings are predominantly timber and brick, built in the Scandinavian style. He won the NZIA national award in 1979 for the Romeni House in Cashmere.
Richard Dalman, Chairman, Canterbury Branch of the New Zealand Institute of Architects says that in the 1950s and 1960s Christchurch architects were leading New Zealand into modernism. “In 1952 Don Donnithorne’s own house brought a simple Scandinavian modern style to Christchurch with a clean lines gable form. This approach was then developed further by Donnithorne, Warren and Mahoney, Peter Beaven, Don Cowie and many others to form a model that has been much copied throughout the city.â€
Photo by John Doogan
November 20th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Our Donnithorne house in Cashmere has had on going problems due to poor building practice from the building company recommended by Donnithorne.The house is 15 years old and in this time we have experienced continual roof leaks Stratco replaced the internal guttering in the valley areas and also replaced about one third of the roof. We have replaced carpet in the bed rooms two times.Soon after moving in both bathrooms needed repair due to leaks; the toilet in the bathroom came adrift ,most of the interior of the house had to be repaired and repainted.Carpet has also been removed from the office because of foundation leaks We could go on but you get the picture.Donnithorne stated he only had top quality builders and insisted that even tho he had not used them before they were good commercial builders. Skilled tradesmen would be used.The roofers needed 7 weeks to complete the roof,by this time most of the other sub contractors had finished.Donnithorne only visited a few times and left this task to others in his practice.The builders were Bushnell Builders and like Donnithorne they let us down .We are replacing theTudor metal tile roof at a large cost.FAIR GO DON.
October 16th, 2015 at 9:51 am
Just to add our personal experience – we’re living in an early 60s Don Donnithorne house which seems to be one of the few on our part of the Port Hills which ISN’T being demolished. It has a fair amount of damage underneath but we’re going to get it repaired (only 5 years since the quake) back to original standard. Don maybe had a premonition of the quakes – reinforced concrete ring foundation, wood framing, simple square shape hugging the incline and high ceiling, along with a tin roof = earthquake proof!
Sadly, we won’t be using Donnithorne Architects anymore due to their sheer incompetence – not from Don but from the remaining staff there (I won’t go into details). Reading the above post, this doesn’t seem to be an uncommon occurrence.
August 7th, 2016 at 7:30 pm
The above from “Morris” is news to me as I have taken the practice over from my father and know nothing about this. Staff I have are certainly not incompetent and would love to know what this refers to. We have helped out a lot of clients with Donnithorne houses, most of it at our cost due to Insurance Companies not wanting to pay Architects a fair fee, but are very happy to pay large fees to Structural Engineers. We have also managed to get substantial insurance payouts for our clients.
December 31st, 2017 at 10:04 pm
Have just read this. Just to update – the house has been fixed and our insurance company has had no issue with paying our (new) architect an appropriate fee, representing the special (and possibly historic) nature of the house.
To be paid this fee, one just has to be a qualified architect, Martin…