Dorset St Flats. Miles Warren.
These eight flats were produced for three young bachelor owners (including Warren himself), each having one flat to occupy and the others available to rent.
Designed before Warren & Mahoney was officially established, it employs the brutalist ideas Miles Warren brought back from Britain.
The result is a simple but elegant composition of concrete block, in-situ RC floor structures, full-height openings and low-pitched timber-framed roofs. The first conscious use of concrete block and fairface concrete inside a NZ house, the building was dubbed “Fort Dorset†by scandalized locals.
Little known fact: Mile’s name tag is still on the fuse box of number 4.
Text by Andrew Barrie
May 20th, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Still no word on the future outcome of this great block…now a category 1 Historic Places Trust listing…
June 21st, 2014 at 3:36 pm
The Dorset St flats remind me of to Bill Howell’s 1945 Hampstead Heath terrace of modernist houses.
March 20th, 2016 at 9:44 am
Bill Howell’s Hampstead Heath terraces were built between 1954-1956, only just before these