Julia Gatley

The fourth in a series that documents architectural conservation in different parts of the world, Architectural Conservation in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands: National Experiences and Practice addresses cultural heritage protection in a region which comprises one third of the earth’s surface. In response to local needs, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands have developed some of the most important and influential techniques, legislation, doctrine and theories in cultural heritage management in the world. The evolution of the heritage protection ethos and contemporary architectural conservation practices in Australia and Oceania are discussed on a national and regional basis using ample illustrations and examples. Accomplishments in architectural conservation are discussed in their national and international contexts, with an emphasis on original developments (solutions) and contributions made to the overall field. Enriched with essays contributed from fifty-nine specialists and thought leaders in the field, this book contains an extraordinary breadth and depth of research and synthesis on the why’s and how’s of cultural heritage conservation. Its holistic approach provides an essential resource and reference for students, academics, researchers, policy makers, practitioners and all who are interested in conserving the built environment.

… we of this Architectural Centre in Wellington are a group of architects and draughtsmen and wood engravers and other people whose greatest claim to affiliation is an overriding enthusiasm for good design."" – Design Review, 1948 ""Planning was the battle-cry, the code name for the vital process that would make possible and indeed inevitable the world we intended to make. It meant design, as opposed to accident, or habit; everything from lamp-post to urban design."" – Allan Wild In 1946, just as the Group was being established in Auckland, Wellington established the Architectural Centre. Members of both were young and idealistic, and they shared common beliefs – in the transformative potential of modern architecture, in need for urban development to be carefully controlled, in the desirability of planning for a better future. The Group survived for just over a decade while the Centre still exists, but remarkably architects remember the former but not the latter. While the Group focused on the small, refined, architecturally designed house that was to dominate the mythology of New Zealand architecture, the Centre focused on the urban living that New Zealanders actually embraced and tackled tough questions: how houses go together to make suburbs, how those people who do not belong to the archetypal nuclear family might best be housed, with how the central city and the public realm might be saved. This book recovers the powerful history, politics and architecture of the Architectural Centre to return us to a vision of a modernist city, partially realised in Wellington New Zealand. Gatley and Walker begin writing the city back into the history of architecture in this country.

Over many years, Ian Athfield and his team at Athfield Architects have reshaped New Zealand architecture - from the Buck House at Te Mata Estate to Wellington's Civic Square, from Jade Stadium to Athfield's own sprawling settlement on the Khandallah hills. Reflecting on half a century of work, Julia Gatley's landmark book introduces a major body of architecture that will lead readers through modernism, postmodernism and beyond. Its four-part structure traces Athfield's formative years; the fledgling firm and its radical 1960s and '70s houses; its important break into commercial work; and finally its impact in the public, urban and institutional realms. Athfield Architects combines newly commissioned photography, evocative original architectural drawings and a rich text informed by extensive archival research and interviews with key figures in the firm. Taking us from the slums of Manila to the streets of post-quake Christchurch, this major book shows how New Zealand's leading contemporary architect is transforming the way we all might live.