Quality ‘hard to quantify’

Press, 2 November 1989, Page 32

Quality ‘hard to quantify’

Architecture is usually a good indicator of the social and economic currents of any particular era. One local architect with a seasoned appreciation of just how difficult it can be to select architectural projects that best provide a fusion of form, function and style, is Mr Gavin Willis, of Willis and Associates. After having been an integral part of the judging process for the NZIA Awards in Canterbury for many years he has left the process to other architects for the first time this year. Mr Willis agrees with his contemporaries that the emphasis on commercial buildings this year is the upshot of the economic downturn of the last two years. “Residential work has really just started to pick up pace again in the last six months,” Mr Willis says.

Over the years of judging he has come to the conclusion that there is a tendency among architects to use the awards to

“showcase” works that are not in fact truly representative of the bulk of their work.

While conceding that this is a very human trait he also stresses that in residential work, "the bulk of architects’ work is in the $lOO-200,000 property bracket.”

This bread and butter nature of a typical architectural practice tends to get overlooked in the fanfare of the awards process, he contends.

Asked for his favourite pieces of architecture over the last two decades, Mr Willis demurred with the statement that “entry quality is so hard to quantify, taste is after all such a personal matter.” Looking back broadly over the 1960 s and 1970 s and Canterbury architecture, he sees “some excellent architecture going on in those decades.” “It was definitely a less obtrusive style because with hindsight we were still all suffering the constraints of the postwar era.

“A realist school ruled then where a vital part of

design was to make a structure look as if it works.”

Wary of trends, Mr Willis believes that in the 1980 s we have “drifted into high-tech and postmodern structures with the latest wave being deconstructivism.” While trends tend to gain the most industry coverage Gavin Willis personally believes that they should not be given too much emphasis. “Architecture is pretty unpredictable, trends can be identified but by then they will already be in a state of flux and at the same time these labels/ trends don’t really impact on the bulk of work architects do.” He also thinks that it is unfortunate that architects do not submit examples of another “bread and butter” aspect of their residential work, renovations and alterations. He ascribes this reluctance to the same mix of peer pressure and perception that often precludes submitting middle range residential projects for awards.