Architect Roger Walker's arguable 1973 mews project wins NZIA award

Architect Roger Walker famously designed the Park Mews development in Wellington in 1973 as a protest in opposition to the "winning uniformity and anonymity" of multi-unit residential buildings.

As a citation from the brand new Zealand architecture Awards jury recorded: "Who desires to perceive their domestic as the fifth window from the left on the 0.33 ground of the second one block?"

Having presented Walker a Gold Medal in 2016 for his "top notch contribution" to architecture, the NZIA has now known the main architect with another honour – his Park Mews undertaking in Hataitai has gained a 2018 Wellington Enduring architecture Award.
In pronouncing the award on Thursday, may additionally 3, the judges stated few homes say 'Wellington' like Roger Walker's Park Mews. "This local landmark, with its signature turrets and portholes, isn't just a talking point for the ones hiking through Hataitai to the airport; it's far emblematic of a duration of new Zealand architecture that shunned modernist norms in favour of a greater radical method."Park Mews is a excessive point of a building fashion that has turn out to be as synonymous with Wellington as the gabled modernism of Miles Warren and his cohort became with Christchurch."inside the most latest awards, Walker additionally received a Housing Multiunit Award for Te Aro Pā consider Papakāinga Housing improvement at Greta point.
The architect says he's "stoked" to win awards for multi-unit trends forty years apart.

"those are both unique initiatives for me. they are quite exclusive to each other but in addition they have loads in commonplace in that they each embraced the assignment of presenting high fine low cost housing.they may be each green uses of land, our most precious asset. desirable use of land is an critical a part of less expensive housing. We can't create greater land, but we can use the land more efficiently without sacrificing the first-rate of housing."

Walker says the 14-unit Te Aro Pā consider Papakāinga Housing improvement became the first papakāinga improvement in Wellington and is a part of the growing trend for Māori landowners are locating answers for the housing disaster.

"when I designed it i was aware that the folks who lived there could have a whanau connection so it changed into important to aid interaction with shared areas.

"on the equal time we needed to ensure contemporary living requirements in phrases of insulation and heat, durability, and privacy. I desired the houses to be strong and green, and to look properly.

"it's the equal feeling I had after I designed Park Mews inside the early Seventies. i'm heartened to listen how lots human beings still revel in living there."

the sooner NZIA quotation described the mews as a "village of little homes".

"Park Mews championed communitarian togetherness inside the face of the suburban alienation that Roger felt so keenly in his Hamilton adolescence."

In an interview with Stuff in 2016, Walker stated his hobby in architecture was born out of a response to the deeply uninspiring neighbourhood he grew up in.

His mother and father' residence was one in every of 1000 clones inside the suburb of Fairfield. "I ought to never apprehend why a pile of building substances could arrive outside a domain after which morph into precisely the equal-searching set of buildings."

He equated the reference to Aotearoa as 'The Land of the lengthy White Cloud' as being the ceilings in all of the homes on his road, all on the identical peak, all of the equal coloration.

"Why could you get a whole pile of four-through-twos and placed them together in precisely the equal manner? I knew that there must be alternative approaches to house human beings and that you can make special shapes and paperwork with these materials."

other early signature tasks to be designed through Walker consist of the Britten residence (1973), Whakatane Airport terminal (1971), the Sand fort inn at the Kapiti Coast (1971), homes at Rainbow Springs in Rotorua (1974-1981) and the Waitomo Caves vacationer Centre (1980).

Walker, major, of Walker architecture and layout in Wellington, become made an partner of the new Zealand Institute of Architects in 1973 and a Fellow in 1987. He obtained an ONZM for services to structure inside the 1999 Queens Birthday Honours. Walker's projects have gained severa structure and tourism awards over a few years.