Itinerary City Guide: Whangārei | Architecture Now

Whangārei Harbour has been important since our earliest days, serving as a touchdown level for migratory waka and a centre for commerce throughout pre-colonial occasions. Because the missionaries and settlers moved south from the Bay of Islands, a number of households took up residence from the 1830s however fled in 1845 when battle broke out within the north; many didn’t return. The city later developed as a port for pure sources extracted from the hinterland – significantly after coal was discovered close by – the port situated in what’s now the City Basin.

The financial significance of coastal delivery routes light when rail linked town to the nation within the Twenties. Building of the Marsden Level Oil Refinery boosted the area within the Nineteen Sixties and Northport within the 2000s, although Northland’s financial system misplaced vigour relative to different areas. The town has retained, although, an fascinating assortment of buildings. Maybe an upside of its comparatively low density has been a sample of letting outdated buildings tackle new makes use of. The place different cities have scrapped and changed facilities, Whangārei’s outdated submit workplace, council workplaces and libraries survive.

Because the listings present, whereas a lot has been constructed by out-of- towners, town has a lineage of adventurous and completed locals. These now embody established corporations similar to HB Structure, in addition to practices adopting different fashions – community-based facilitators ĀKAU and kaupapa Māori specialists Matakohe Structure + Urbanism.

Whangārei boasts a few our most fascinating current public buildings. The Hundertwasser Artwork Centre celebrates Friedenreich Hundertwasser’s artwork and his exuberant method to creating buildings. It repudiates the cool sophistication of most up to date structure. The place a lot of what we do is fragile – the best way a constructing is occupied can diminish or overwhelm  design intentions – this constructing is muscular. It’s, although, not with out contradictions – whereas not precisely bling-ed out, it’s wildly bespoke; its $33m finances was very beneficiant and its obvious looseness has needed to be rigorously contrived. The Hihiaua Cultural Centre is a group area for waka restoration and different Māori crafts. An unassuming construction using humble supplies, its key strikes are easy – notably, a spacious porch animated by sliding screens and doorways. Within the face of a lot group life and volunteerism being privatised and professionalised, it’s an exemplar of a group with restricted sources benefiting from an architect’s talent. Once more, the story will not be easy – the Centre is meant as the primary stage of a sprawling $20m scheme.

So, whereas Whangārei connects deeply into our historical past, it additionally presents – whether or not options to our routine modes or the straightforward re-use of outdated buildings – some key paths ahead.

THE ITINERARY

01. 1903 – Kensington Park Grandstand

45 Park Avenue, Kensington 
Edward Bartley

Probably the most prolific architects of his time, Bartley is finest identified for the Princes Road Synagogue and the Blind Institute constructing, each in Auckland. He was very energetic in Whangārei, designing church buildings and business buildings, the Municipal Chambers, and a number of other buildings on the hospital, little of which survives. This grandstand, in-built Kensington Park to serve the Agricultural and Pastoral Society and the native racing membership, is among the few in New Zealand with a barrel roof. It has been relocated and now serves the principle hockey pitch at Northland Hockey Affiliation on the northern fringe of Kensington Park. 

02. 1912 – Whangārei Municipal Chambers

71 Financial institution Road
Hugh Grierson

Edward Bartley had constructed municipal chambers simply after the flip of the century. The present constructing was designed by Hugh Grierson who would later go into apply with Kenneth Aimer and Keith Draffin and produce the Auckland Warfare Memorial Museum. Demonstrating how small and intertwined the career was at the moment, Draffin had educated in Bartley’s workplace. Standing in a line-up of civic and monetary establishments, the Municipal Chambers initially included a public studying room and library on the bottom ground, with borough and county workplaces above. The constructing was severely broken by hearth in 2019 – it’s nonetheless scaffolded and repairs are as a consequence of begin this 12 months. 

03. 1925 – Whangārei Railway Station

Railway Street
NZ Railways Architectural Division
underneath Sir George Troup

A harbour metropolis, Whangārei was fashioned round delivery. The station arrived comparatively late: a part of the burst of railroad constructing within the first a part of the twentieth century. Its completion marked the linking of Northland into the nationwide community. The design is a variation on the sample typical of regional stations – a timber station constructing with steel-framed platform roof – however it was one of many final produced underneath the path of Troup, who retired from the railway in 1925 and was later elected mayor of Wellington. The Northland line now not serves passengers and the station is now house to native social golf equipment.

04. 1926 – Former Public Belief Workplace

69 Financial institution Road
Stanley W. Fearn

British-born, Wellington-based Fearn was the winner (with Austin Fast) of the NZIA’s first-ever Gold Medal in 1927 – within the days when the judging was carried out by the RIBA in Britain – for the William Sales space Memorial Coaching School in Wellington. Fearn designed Public Belief Workplaces in a number of provincial centres, together with Hawera, Hastings and Tauranga, right here producing an almost symmetrical composition in a Stripped Classical type. The Public Belief has now moved on however the constructing continues to be in comparatively authentic situation – a go to to the bar on the bottom ground offers a style of the grand public areas.

05. 1936 – Whangārei Central Library

7 Rust Avenue
Horace Massey and Alfred Morgan

Massey was one in every of New Zealand’s most influential architects between the wars, profitable 4 NZIA Gold Medals between 1933 and 1940. Massey and Morgan had practised collectively in Auckland within the Twenties, and continued to collaborate when Morgan was later primarily based in Whangarei. This constructing, a crisp however pretty unassuming neo- Georgian composition in brick and pale stone, earned them each an NZIA Gold Medal. The constructing was prolonged in 1964 by native architect Charles Corne and, once more, within the Eighties by Peter McNaught, one other native. It was later changed by a brand new constructing at its rear. See Residence & Constructing, Feb 1939.

06. 1962 – Chapel of St Luke, Whangārei Base Hospital

Hospital Street, Maunu
Haughey, Fox and Companions

Once more, Edward Bartley had designed (professional bono) Whangārei’s first correct hospital in 1901. Within the Fifties, with the native inhabitants rising, Haughey, Fox and Companions commenced work on a contemporary ‘base hospital’, with this crisp chapel tucked in towards the bottom of a ward tower. It has an entry from the road however a direct connection to the wards. Kerry Francis says, “The constructing pursues later modernism’s fascination with the play of sunshine on usually closely textured surfaces. It’s constructed primarily with stretcher bond brick, which is plastered externally, and uncovered internally, between plastered concrete frames, making certain a mild heat ambiance.”

07. 1963 – Christ Church

2 Kamo Street, Regent
Kingston, Reynolds, Thom, and Allardice 

The Anglicans have had a presence in Whangārei because the time of the early settlers, who held common companies of their properties. The primary church constructed on this website was devoted by Bishop George Selwyn in 1860. The present constructing was produced by modernist maestro Ian Reynolds at KRTA, on the time New Zealand’s solely multidisciplinary consulting agency. Its architectural output was largely business and college work however the apply additionally designed a reasonably eclectic collection of church buildings, with this maybe essentially the most refined. The heft of its strengthened concrete columns is offset by elegantly tapered geometry and delicate timber in-fills.

08. 1964 – Fletcher Home

25 Rathbone Road
Franz Iseke

Iseke is one in every of our lesser-known émigré architects. German however born within the Far East, he studied at Harvard and met his Kiwi spouse in Australia earlier than arriving in New Zealand in 1950. He labored at progressive business agency Thorpe, Cutter, Pickmere and Douglas earlier than beginning his personal apply. His printed work is stripped-back, Case Examine-style homes however he produced business buildings of varied sizes. Occupying a complete metropolis block and overlooking a park, this undertaking evokes Basel greater than it does provincial Aotearoa. Constructed for the Fletcher Belief and Funding Firm, its floor ground is outlets with three flooring of leasehold workplaces above.

09. 1967 – Former Submit Workplace

16 Rathbone Road
Authorities Architect’s Road

Sheppard served as Authorities Architect throughout a time of big development (1959–1971) and a number of other regional submit workplaces have been designed throughout his tenure, together with the frilly, round landmark in Putāruru (1970) and a svelte international-style construction on pilotis in Hawera (1967). The Whangārei construction, designed by Regional Architect J. H. Barker for the Authorities Architect’s Workplace, is much less demonstrative – a four-square however elegant composition in pre-cast concrete, lightened by bands of home windows and delicate sunshades. With the evolution of postal companies, all these buildings have modified use, and this undertaking was not too long ago refitted because the regional Māori Land Courtroom.

10. 1971 – State Advances Company (SAC) Constructing

3-5 Hunt Road
Beatson, Rix-Trott, Carter and Co

The Beatson et al. partnership, which initially included Horace Massey (see itemizing 5), produced within the postwar interval progressive buildings throughout an enormous vary of varieties – business, industrial, college, church buildings, wonderful homes and so forth. Following Massey’s lead, the agency was energetic in Whangārei, together with making ready a proposal for a civic centre in 1966. Within the interval earlier than banks supplied mortgages, State Advances was a key supply of house loans to low and moderate-income earners. Coverage modifications quickly elevated mortgage volumes within the Nineteen Sixties however the SAC was disestablished within the mid-Seventies, not lengthy after this constructing was accomplished.

11. 1982– Discussion board North

7 Rust Avenue 
Smith, Grant, and Associates