DESIGN OF TOWN HALL

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 1

DESIGN OF TOWN HALL

Christchurch Firm Wins Competition

Messrs Warren and Mahoney, of Christchurch, have won the competition to design the Christchurch town hall and civic centre. Cr. H. G. Hay, chairman of the City Council’s town hall committee, announced the result yesterday.

The winning design was chosen from five final entries selected from the original 58 designs submitted for the competition, which was open to all New Zealand architects.

It was one of two Christchurch entries in the final stages of the competition.

Members of all the councils involved in the town hall project would be invited to a meeting on Tuesday) evening, when there would be a full report by the assessors and the winning design would be displayed, Cr. Hay said. As some members were away at the Counties’ Association conference and the assessors had not had time to prepare a full report, it was not possible to give further details at present, Cr. Hay said, but he was sure that the public and the entrants would welcome the early news of the winning entry. “Brilliant” In a preliminary report, the professional adviser to the assessors, Mr R. C. Muston, a Wellington architect, had commented that the selected scheme had been brilliantly exploited and the result would bear comparison with the best overseas civic buildings. “In addition to being an en-

tirely workable and functional schme, it is also an architectural work of the highest order,” Mr Muston said.

The buildings called for in the first stage of the civic centre development the town hall, concert chamber, theatre, banquet room, restaurant, and meeting rooms—should be able to be built within the budget limit of £1.2 million stipulated as a condition of the competition. Cr. Hay said that the exhibition of all the entries in the competition would open In the Durham Street Art Gallery on July 1 and be open to the public for about two weeks from July 2. The assessors for the competition in addition to Mr Muston and Cr. Hay, were Messrs A. F. de Lisle, of Hamilton, and E. J. McCoy, of Dunedin, and G. D. Griffiths, a former city councillor who is an architect Notable Buildings Messrs Warren and Mahoney have won two gold medals of the New Zealand Institute of Architects—in 1959 for the South Island Dental Nurses’ Training School

in Christchurch and in 1963 for the Christchurch Memorial Garden Crematorium. Their other public buildings include new student unions at Auckland, Massey, Canterbury, and Otago universities; Wool Exchange buildings in Christchurch and Dunedin; the new Christ, church College and its Chapel; the Chapman block at Christ’s College; a Government House, general hospital, and the Hotel Mendana in the Solomon Islands; and the new Condominium building and a new coeducational school in the New Hebridies. Careers Mr Warren was Somes scholar at Christ’s College in 1941, was employed by the late Mr Cecil Wood in 1947 and 1948, and took his diplomas at the Auckland University School of Architecture in 1950 and in England in 1953 and 1954. He started private practice with Mr G. T. Lucas and Mr Mahoney in 1958, and the two continued together when Mr Lucas retired. Mr Warren was made a fellow of the Institute of Architects this year. Mr Mahoney was educated at the Christchurch Technical College, took the professional course in architecture extramurally from Auckland, arid qualified as an associate of the institute in 1958. Before joining Mr Warren, he worked for Mr Melville Lawry and for Mr Griffiths.