Architecture is the winner on the day: the University of Canterbury's plan for a bijou music school among the Mountforts has been rejected. Cynics had observed that the school's practice rooms would have been too small to rattle a tambourine within, but the design would have provided ample spaces for corporate entertaining. Sir Miles may be downhearted, but at least the Dorset Street Flats have been preserved (the bewildered should read Mr Matthews on Warren and Mahoney).
Meanwhile on a campus nearby, Megan battles the grey robots.
5 comments:
How marvellous to have the most difficult work of my professional life accompanied by one of my favourite songs. Many days are coarsening, to say the least, and I rely on the kind of post-punk delicacy of the Lips and their ilk to keep some semblance of the aesthete about me.
All power to you, Megan. The staff are fortunate to have you.
Love the video! :-)
But what John Walsh says in that Philip Matthews article you link to is nonsense: " If you ask people to name a New Zealand architect, they would have said Warren, now they'd say Athfield."
John is an outstanding editor of Architecture NZ, much better than I was, but that is simply the view of someone who spent too long in Wellington. No one in Auckland who is not an architect has a clue who Ath is. They'd say Gordon Moller, Noel Lane, Marshall Cook, Pete Bossley. Not saying they are the best, but they have the profile.
I think you are right, and I think Walsh is also overlooking the obvious difference between W&M and Athfield Architects - that Athfield the man is still active in his firm.
Besides, during the last 30 years the media gaze at architecture has shifted from public buildings to private houses. Few in the media now care about the sort of buildings W&M made or those that Athfield makes, now that his practice has shifted in the opposite direction - from hippy houses to corporate offices. They care about ideal homes. Their interest is lifestyle, not architecture.
So, I would add Crosson Clarke Carnachan to your list: they make the houses that people long to live in, those which are featured in the style magazines.
Where I disagree with you is in your claim that John Walsh was a much better editor than you.
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