Obituary: Marshall Cook | Architecture Now

Phrases by Pip Cheshire:

Marshall grew up surrounded by the maps and images of his cartographer and historic curator father in Napier. College vacation jobs on the native architect’s workplace launched him to John Scott and strengthened his enthusiasm for learning structure. He got here to the Auckland College of Structure in 1959, took outing to work with Invoice Wilson and Ivan Juriss — the remnants of Group Architects — John Scott and Lillian Chrystal, then returned to the college to complete in 1966.

Marshall began a follow in 1967 with Terry Hitchcock and so they have been later joined by Peter Sargisson. Within the mid-Seventies, he travelled to England and taught timber development for 3 years. Upon his return to New Zealand within the late Seventies, the follow undertook quite a few ski resort and masterplanning tasks within the USA. This was adopted by work in Japan and Thailand earlier than withdrawing from worldwide work within the mid-Nineties. The follow remained Prepare dinner Hitchcock and Sargisson till 1990 and is at the moment often known as Prepare dinner Sargisson and Pirie, with a employees of round 15 endeavor predominantly residential tasks.

Marshall was all the time gracious in his assist of younger, and never so younger, architects and of labor he admired. His affirmations of a accomplished venture, an editorial or a drawing have been the results of considerate consideration of the work and have been delivered with grace, a powerful sense of collegiality and, simply sometimes, a swipe at one other’s not-so-successful venture. His messages of assist and congratulation have been all the time given with out reservation or trace of guarded competitiveness, and have been all of the extra valued for it.

Each Marshall and his follow have been largely identified for a collection of homes that handle to be each extremely civilised and experimental on the identical time. In his 40-odd years of follow, he labored restlessly on the evolution of a home sort that included a profound understanding of the altering dynamics of households over time, and of the vicissitudes of our local weather. The tasks, too, invariably included a sensuous pleasure in supplies and an adventurous exploration of how of structuring and constructing.

Marshall’s empathy for the expansions and conflations of household dimension over many years, intently skilled in his family, generated a parti which splits out a secondary dwelling/working space from the primary home, invariably linking the 2 throughout both an enclosed or partially enclosed courtyard. These secondary dwelling zones allowed for residence occupations, the gradual distancing of youngsters from the household bosom, or the return of bits of the household with their very own household in tow.

The tasks have been typically ingenious of their strategy to construction and development, and sought to minimise the dimensions and quantum of supplies employed. The Pier Z venture at Westhaven, for instance, makes use of yacht know-how’s millennium rig buried inside façade fins to stiffen the massive north-facing glazed façade, whereas a mixture of mezzanine ground diaphragm and repair enclosure buttresses towards lateral load.

The considering underpinning this strategy was mirrored in Marshall’s fixed in search of out of recent tasks, supplies and processes. Although his work was all the time marked by a mild civility and concern for match, be it constructed context, local weather or social organisation, every was all the time one other step within the evolution of his considering. The 2 Prepare dinner household homes, at Parnell and Freemans Bay, present a transparent lineage and growth of his methods for the lodging of households, an more and more subtle manipulation of environmental controls and an enriching of the fabric palette employed. The place the Parnell home borrows a European-like parti of villa and courtyard, the Freemans Bay home joins two enclosures with a lightweight pavilion. The place the previous has a strong block with deeply penetrating openings, the latter’s two blocks are overlaid by assemblies of fins and a profusion of supplies that I think may be given quick shrift in Parnell.

Marshall’s capacity to realize consent for a home with such an eclectic façade as that in Franklin Street is testimony to his capacity to prevail over bureaucratic nonsense, utilizing all potential means at his disposal, starting from well-reasoned argument to goodhumoured bombast. These are abilities that Marshall additionally put to good use as each city commentator and instructor. In each roles, he introduced a powerful, pragmatic understanding of human behaviour, a wholesome regard for the complexities and alternatives of development and design, and a relentless need to civilise the town. His observations have been born of in depth journey and offshore work, the latter involving the masterplanning of ski villages within the US and the design of city transit stations in Asia.

Marshall was an enthusiastic supporter of architectural exercise in all its guises: institute, affiliation, competitions, exhibitions, publications, conferences and that important glue of architectural discourse, the open bottle of wine. In all roles, Marshall’s mercurial and all-encompassing sociability made him a pivot round which a lot of Auckland’s structure and architectural group rotated.

Phrases by Lindley Naismith:

Within the early Eighties, two younger feminine architectural graduates discovered themselves working at Prepare dinner Hitchcock and Sargisson from the follow’s villa workplace in St Georges Bay Street in Parnell. They have been Julie Stout and me. We have been its first feminine architectural staff. We had met Marshall within the last years of our BArchs when he began educating on the College of Auckland College of Structure, after his return from an OE together with his household to Europe and the UK, the place he had additionally discovered work educating structure. We acquired to know him higher over common post-studio drinks on the Kiwi Tavern, the place college students and lecturers, a number of of whom have been practising architects as he was, fraternised. In what was a quirk of historical past of its time, a uncommon bond was cast between two generations of two teams of pals — fledgling architects and rising architects — whose growing skilled lives grew to become uniquely intertwined. Like gravity (or maybe darkish matter?), Marshall was a elementary connecting drive.

Marshall lived and breathed what te ao Māori has given us a sublime phrase for: whanaungatanga – ‘relationship, kinship, sense of household connection – a relationship by means of shared experiences and dealing collectively which supplies individuals with a way of belonging’. Whichever of his worlds you inhabited, getting into Marshall’s orbit meant you’ll be embraced, enfolded and included.

Marshall liked individuals, he liked life, he liked magnificence. He celebrated these loves by means of his structure, which he deeply believed had the facility to rework. He liked those that shared a love of the issues he liked — not solely structure however his household, anybody’s infants, animals, college students, good builders, timber, crusing, previous cities, new cities, discourse, rugby, curry, wine, books, whisky. He took each alternative to get pleasure from his loves, ideally in elaborate mixture.

This was the ‘Marshall-verse’. Anybody who succumbed to its gravitational pull has an array of tales about their experiences. Many are pals, or higher pals, due to their encounters there. Julie conveys one thing of it in her tribute: “What disappointment to understand that honey heat voice won’t ever extra proclaim — his greetings, his ideas, his declamations. I’m scripting this from a rooftop bar overlooking the Bosporous, a spot he knew and liked. It was Marshall who knew that Kahurangi, a beautiful Auckland yacht, was now in Turkey, simply ready for adventures. Marshall all the time knew these kinds of issues. Infuriatingly so, at instances.

Marshall was probably the most beneficiant particular person I knew — particularly together with his time and his information. He reworked the lives of many people younger college students by together with us within the camaraderie of the architectural group. With Prue, he liked connecting threads and other people. He knew the best way to make a spot a house, the best way to form an area and why. Auckland, and we, are so significantly better for him having been in our lives.”

In late July, we celebrated the formidable legacy of Prepare dinner Hitchcock and Sargisson at a gathering of as many as we may spherical up of 5 many years’ price of founders, staff, collaborators, shut contacts, and Friday lunch and Friday evening drinks regulars. Though the assembled represented only a portion of the Marshall-verse, many people characterised the successive generations of younger architects who have been “reworked”, as Julie describes.

Marshall’s extraordinary funding within the architectural journeys of so many by means of his unselfconscious need to instil the pleasure and richness that he himself discovered within the arts of his career, unsurprisingly, additionally prolonged to a lifetime dedication as a instructor of scholars of structure within the academy. Educating and mentoring have been elementary to his personal sense of his life’s work, as essential to him as was his architectural follow. His architectural DNA is clear within the buildings and manner of so many colleagues who discovered not solely an architectural expression however a path within the career, because of his affect – myself included.

Marshall did every thing in his energy to have the life he needed, and what a splendid life it was.