‘I never met a straight line I didn’t like’

As an architect melding ‘‘the solidity of the New Brutalism with the lightweight vernacular of the Group Architects’’, Sir Miles Warren’s influence is huge. Colleen Hawkes reports.

While tributes are flooding in for celebrated New Zealand architect Sir Miles Warren, who died aged 93 on Tuesday, his architectural legacy continues to thrive.

Many projects by Warren and Mahoney, the firm he founded with Maurice Mahoney, have featured over the years – and not just the grand ones, such as the Christchurch Town Hall, but also the houses that sprang from the ‘‘Christchurch School’’.

Te Ka¯ hui Whaihanga NZIA describes the Christchurch School as ‘‘a melding of the solidity of the New Brutalism with the lightweight vernacular of the Group Architects’’.

The Christchurch School lives on to influence numerous architects today, including the team at Herriot, Melhuish O’Neill Architects (HMOA) in Christchurch. The firm lives and breathes Modernism, and the team works out of one of Christchurch’s notable Modernist buildings designed by Warren – the shared office was once the renowned architect’s own home and workplace.

Architect Duval O’Neill said one of the reasons these homes still find favour with Kiwis is because we appreciate there is a real craft involved in the planning of these homes. ‘‘There’s a generosity of space and a (strong) relationship to the outdoors and capturing key views. More often than not, it’s the simplicity that carries through to the built-in joinery that works so well. These houses reflect a real consideration given to the way the spaces will work in the house. The houses are often quite frugal; they are not usually massive houses, but they have been carefully planned to be efficient.’’

Ballantyne House is another exceptional example of Warren’s work. It was designed in 1959 for the Ballantyne retail family.

Ronald Ballantyne had already called on Warren to design his magnificent new department store in the city, and was prepared to push the boundaries of tradition for his own family’s home in Fendalton. The 300-squaremetre house has the concrete block and timber-framed construction that defined the Modernist school of buildings in Christchurch.

‘‘Miles describes it as being essentially Danish in character – a square consisting of a living room, dining room and kitchen, with a long bedroom wing and connecting flat-roofed entrance link.’’

A book on Christchurch Modernism produced in 2020 by Mary Gaudin and Matt Arnold , ‘‘I Never Met a Straight Line I Didn’t Like’’, takes its title from a quote by Warren.

In an interview with Simon Farrell-Green of Here, Arnold said he jokingly accused Warren of never drawing a curved line for the first 30 years of his life: ‘‘The title was his smiling reply.’’

Arnold said: ‘‘Whenever a home of this style pops up for sale, the open homes are unusually popular, and the same faces always there, architecture weirdos like me. We greet each other with an awkward nod and pad around in our socks pointing and saying things like ‘negative detail’ to nobody in particular.’’