Houses Revisited: Rationalist house | Architecture Now

When the architects group Building their experimental home in Takapuna in 1950, they assumed a distinct New Zealand brand of modernity, incorporating lightweight wood construction, low roofing, a free plan and overlapping of indoor and outdoor spaces. Later in the decade, Miles Warren, first in Christchurch’s famous Dorset Street Flats and then in a series of homes in Christchurch and surrounding areas, developed a local language that retained the group’s innovations in planning and outdoor connectivity but also embraced the sense of mass that could Provided by stone masonry only. Low sloping roofs have been replaced by traditional gables and ridge lines drawn from contemporary local Scandinavian architecture as well as Arts and Crafts-inspired homes in Christchurch’s inner suburbs.

The ability of modernism to evolve was called into question by postmodernism in the 1980s, as unwarranted and often inaccurate references to the classical tradition were superimposed on what remained an essentially modernist design approach. Classical postmodern portraits have now been mostly abandoned. Since the mid-1990s, Modernism has reasserted its place as a design philosophy but now that the heroic modernism of the 1920s and 1930s has been carried into history, to be re-examined in major books and exhibitions such as Victoria and Albert Museum Modernism: Designing a New World, its principles have changed radically. Whereas early twentieth century modernism sought to change the world, it is now the architecture of the institution: the group’s latest experimental house models have turned into the guaranteed core of the early twenty-first century modern home. Just as the curtain-walled glass office tower became, in the 1950s, the architectural banner of corporate capitalism, so too has modernity taken on new meanings in the local world.

Christchurch-based architecture firm Wilson and Hill has achieved major success with a series of large, finely detailed, well-designed homes that are challenged to explore contemporary modernity, a filler unimaginable 50 years ago. Their homes on Carlton Mill Street (2001) and Thornycroft Street (2003) received NZIA New Zealand Awards, and their recently completed home on Clyde Road (2006). Clyde Road House, located on a large back section across from the University of Canterbury, was built for a professional couple with a large family. The generous rectangular grounds are approached by a tree-lined walkway of surprising breadth, the corner mass of the house rising beyond a concrete slab wall separating the private garden from the paved front yard.

The house itself is essentially L-shaped. A broad spine extends to the full length of the master suite, its length accentuated by a reflecting pool of similar width that extends east into the garden. Prefabricated cantilever stairs rise to the first floor at either end of this space, obviating the need to go from one end of the house to the other to access the upper floor. Along the north side of the long axis is the formal reception area, kitchen and sink, and a spacious double height living room. This opens to the north to a family room with an outside dining area. Storage, formal dining, and home theater are located to the south of the gallery-like circulation space.

Upstairs, a series of children’s bedrooms runs along the main east-west wing, separated by a living room space from the parents’ bedroom suite. This separation is reinforced by the access way to the master bedroom, via a glass-floored bridge, which also forms a gallery at the east end of the living room. The visual subjectivity of this drawbridge-like feature, suspended in the space next to floor-to-ceiling windows, evokes a sense of psychological unease, although safety is not compromised at all. A similar sense of danger is induced by the five-meter-high cantilever in the master bedroom, which forms the canopy over the outdoor dining area. Visual support for this element, a series of slim and widely spaced pilots, reads again as insignificant, despite the fact that the reason dictates that the structure is mission-level. From the outside, the master bedroom suite reads as a distinct element, covered in gray aluminum panels and hovering over the fully glazed family room below. The visual illumination of this suite contrasts with the solidity of the master living and bedroom suite, which is constructed of thermal mass concrete panels with dark gray terrazzo cladding above.

The subdued exterior palate of unpainted concrete and terrazzo cladding and aluminum is emphasized by the use of Timaru blue stone paving that extends the narrow color range into the garden. Interior visual warmth is provided by American white oak wood used in the living room floors, except for the formal sitting and dining areas. Half-sawn white oak is also used as a wall surface along the north wall of the Circulation Gallery and for fixtures in living and family rooms. To expand the continuity of the exterior aesthetic, terrazzo chimneys are used in the interior, while the aluminum cladding of the master bedroom suite wraps around the interior wall it shares with the living room. This physical redundancy also indicates the discreet, pod-like nature of the wing. At any moment, it seems, they could break apart and float away.

Another notable feature outside are the sun blinds, vertical to the north and east walls of the living space, horizontal along the north-facing bedroom windows. The screens themselves are of translucent white glass, which provides shade from the sun while reflecting the light diffused into the rooms behind. When lit at night, the screens glow gently. These details indicate the subtlety of the architects’ approach to the overall design, which developed over the course of two years. The extra two years needed to build the house indicate that the construction process is extraordinarily demanding, more akin to a commercial building than a home. It also refers to the architects’ efforts to outfit the house with state-of-the-art electronic systems that integrate lighting, security and sound functions throughout the building.

The architects and their clients worked together on furnishing the house, ensuring there were no inconsistencies in architecture and applied arts that could easily undermine the most meticulous plans. The collaboration between architect and artist Bing Dawe resulted in a custom-sized rug from Dawe’s Eels & Shags (Migration) series, created by Dilana Rugs, for the living space. The home’s extensive interior wall surfaces call for additional artwork of this scale and boldness; In their absence, the interiors seem to live in but are not yet fully inhabited.

For all the attention that Wilson and Hill have given to creating a livable environment capable of accommodating Canterbury’s extreme climatic conditions, while also preserving the connections between indoor and outdoor spaces, the indefinable quality of the local world remains somewhat elusive. Is this a function of the scale of the house, the accuracy of the scheme with fine differentiation of areas, the carefully controlled palette of materials, or simply the tyranny of the right angle? Even at its most rigorous, the early masters of the Modern Movement realized that homes required some expression of play, the quality of what was unpredictable and irrational. For example, Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhat House (1928-1930) in Brno, Czech Republic, used a voluptuously curved wall as a space divider. Le Corbusier also recognized the power of curved forms and cliffs that cut through space, as well as the value of reconciling rough and unfinished materials with pristine surfaces.

The interplay of sensibility and subtlety in early Modernism architecture is also evident in the work of David Chipperfield, the contemporary English architect who was a constant point of reference for Chris Wilson. As Chipperfield himself admitted in his own works, the rough brickwork of the 1920s Mays Berlin houses and the spiral staircases of Le Corbusier’s early villas are as much as part of Modernism’s heritage as the movement’s loyalty to the aesthetic machine. No architect realized Modernism’s ability to drive blind alleys more clearly than Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect Wilson clearly admired. However, even Wright’s more problematic homes from the late 1920s and early 1930s, which bear some relationship to the work of Wilson and Hill, have a spatial complexity beyond rational analysis.

The legacy of modernity remains a problem. In its name, the hearts of great cities were destroyed and acres of soulless public housing were built, but modernity also inspired buildings of indisputable craftsmanship and expressive power. As Modernism seems certain to remain a source of powerful ideas for contemporary architects – in New Zealand as much as elsewhere – for the foreseeable future, it is necessary to pay attention not only to the rationalism that was used to validate the architectural revolution of the twentieth century, but also to the contradictions Fundamental to modernity – for its richness and complexity, the irrationality inherent in it.

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