Architecture in N.Z.

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33189, 31 March 1973, Page 10

Architecture in N.Z.

Architecture 1820-1970. By John Stacpoole and Peter Beaven. A. H. and A. W. Reed. 108 pp. (Reviewed by 0.C.G.) The latest volume to appear in Reed’s New Zealand Art series, John Stacpoole and Peter Beaven’s survey of New Zealand architecture is a wellplanned and executed introduction to the country’s major architects and architectural trends. Including only some 80 odd buildings, the authors have had to be rigorously selective, and the informed reader’s response to the volume is bound to include regrets that such and such a building has been included while others have been left out. This reviewei, for instance, would like to have seen the Nelson Provincial Buildings included alongside Beatson’s other major work. Nelson College, and to achieve this would gladly have parted with those two ugly and overrated pieces of Christchurch architecture. Mountfort’s Museum and Hurst Seager’s City Council Chambers. Mountfon. after all. is well-represented b\ Sunnyside and the Provincial Council Chambers, while Hurst Seager’s messy amalgam of Elizabethan and Queen Anne styles is surely best forgotten. It would also have been good t see in a book of this sort a specimen of the very good verandahed and gabled Victorian farmhouses with which certain areas of New Zealand are still, mercifully, well-supnlied. Messrs Stacpoole and Beaven include several examples of verandahs and gabies, but they are all prestige work, as in Sir George Grey’s Mansion House or the Pah in Auckland, rather than good average buildings. Which ought not to be too surprising in a book which tends to concentrate on architects rather than on architecture, which is representative more of individual achievements rather than of society’s as a whole. Whether there ought to be more of a social dimension in such a book as this is. perhaps, a matter of personal taste. Taste is involved, too, in another reservation the reviewer has concerning this survey of New Zealand architecture. Given that Peter Beaven is co-author, is it wise to include one of his buildings, however good? Even more, is it wise to describe his Road Tunnel Building in such enthusiastic terms? That "the exuberant forms of the building mav be considered to have been one of the liberating influences in New Zealand architecture at a vitally important time” may be true, but it would be better said bv others outside this book The photogranhs used by Messrs Stacpoole and Beaven are of a uniformly high standard, and will certainly inspire the reader to see for himself, it is all the more cause for regret that so many of the earler buildings have been destroyed, some by accident but others, like the Exchange Building. Dunedin, by a combination of neglect and civic vandalism. Our architectural heritage is slender enough as it is, without such losses as this.