Christchurch Modern » Peter Beaven

299 Lake Terrace Rd. Peter Beaven.

admin — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 08:07:31 +0000

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.

London N6. Tile Kiln Studios. Peter Beaven.

admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 07:48:50 +0000

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.

Tile Kiln Studios was featured in the Cement & Concrete Association’s magazine in 1982. It wrote:

“One of the points that the New Zealand architect Peter Beaven has made so well in this group of studio houses in Highgate is how effectively white-painted blockwork can achieve a sharp and satisfying clarity of modelling. The white blockwork, repeated inside and out, is built up into a series of intersecting vertical planes capped by gables and variously pitched roofs… The effect – appropriate enough for studio houses – approaches an abstract composition of black and white sculpture. This is obviously a technique that the architect fully understands: he has used it before in New Zealand, notably in the Chateau Commodore Hotel and the 1974 Commonwealth Games Stadia, both in Christchurch. It is an attractive architectural medium and one that fits many contexts in Britain.

“There are, of course, other interesting ideas behind this housing as well. It is… a co-operative venture built by six people who bought the plots in the approved scheme and worked on the finishing themselves. Not the least interesting aspect is the architect himself. Peter Beaven is an individualist with a sense of humour and perspective. He must be, otherwise how could he have made the break with his own country New Zealand, where he was one of the best-known architects in South Island, together with Miles Warren with whom he was a student. This housing scheme in Highgate… would seem to be a reflection of a strongly held personal ideology, rather than of conformity to any fashionable mainstream of architectural thought. The simplicity and clarity of form displayed in these studio houses no doubt reflects to some extent the architect’s preferred lifestyle. The gables, variously pitched roofs and strong vertical rhythms are very much in the grain of local domestic building, although the site is in fact one of those where no special architectural character was dictated.”

Peter Beaven.

admin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:08:05 +0000

Peter Beaven’s long career has been marked by his opposition to modernist philosophies during which time his practice has been animated by a strong sense of history and place. Beaven’s diverse body of work is incorporated into New Zealand modernism as though his strongly expressed beliefs about the role of the architect under modernism were immaterial.

Beaven’s maintains that he was never a modernist. In an interview with David Killick he says of modern houses: “I don’t want to be unkind, because a lot of architects are driven by their clientsâ€¦but I think if you drive down Carlton Mill Road you see most of the issues there.

“I think they are fashionable objects which come out of a computer, they will become out of date and out of fashion very quickly, because what makes eternal buildings is that they understand fully the cultural history they are built in, the time they are built in the materials available, in other words they are buildings of their time, and context, history, and they last.”

{cue applause}

Related houses on Christchurch Modern:

Millbank Ln. Carlton Mill.

Photo of Peter by Stephen Goodenough