NZFA SCREENING. BEYOND THE GEYSER ROOM

A compilation of excerpts from the following titles on NZ architecture for a 2006 Film Archive screening in association with the Victoria University School of Architecture & Design:

F27139 EXPO '70 (1970)
F10935 LAMB INTERNATIONAL (1971)
F9417 THE BEEHIVE: CONCEPT AND FUNCTION (1978)
F4708 NOTES ON A NEW ZEALAND CITY 1971
F8315 DRAPER RESIDENCE PARITAI DRIVE AUCKLAND (1971)
F60684 MOTORWAY (1972)
F3281 STAGE FOUR (1974)
F4708 NOTES ON A NEW ZEALAND CITY (1971)
F11590 ENVIRONMENT 1990 (1972)

Commercials:
- New Zealand Post Office. national development bonds - your country (1971)
- Firth Concrete. the yellow trucks of concrete (1971)
- Daisy stools (1971)
- Hardies asbestos & cement building products. barbecue (1978)
- Giant paints. aquagloss - aquaproof (1971)
- BP central heating. homeheat (1971)
- Raro instant breakfast drink. neighbours (1971)
- House of York. fashion selection (1978)
- Wearathon carpet (1975)
- Pledge furniture polish. eighteen percent more (1973)
- Atlas oven. neighbours (1971)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Beyond the Geyser Room ...": NZ Architecture in the 1970s
(NZ Film Archive in association with the Wellington Architectural Centre)

Programme notes by Christine McCarthy

The 1970s is reknown as a time of experimentation, racial and sexual politics, and concerns about the environment. We experienced two oil shocks (1973 and 1979), car-less days (1979) , and the introduction of colour television in 1973. William Sutch (well-known patron of Ernst Plischke's accomplished Sutch house in Brooklyn) was charged under the Official Secrets Act (1951) on suspicion of passing state secrets to the Soviet Union in 1974. The decade concluded with the grizzly images of the Erebus disaster, and inquiry.

1) The programme tonight examines four aspects of architecture in the 1970s. It begins with the public architectures of the New Zealand pavilion in Expo 70 and the Beehive. Then aspects of domestic architecture and wider concerns and strategies about housing are considered. The third section of the programme looks at urban design, specifically the debates in the 70s around the building of Wellington's inner city motorways, which have recently been echoed in relation to the city bypass. The final section presents Environment 1990 a broad and speculative consideration about design and the environment.

For architecture, the seventies began with one of the key international events of the 1970s: Expo '70, Osaka, Japan. This Expo, documented in Expo '70 (1970), was the climax of the 1960s fascination with inflatable and experimental architecture. New Zealand's architectural contribution to the expo included Wanganui architect Michael Payne's Geyser Room Restaurant, which is used as a context for the New Zealand Meat Producers Board's promotional film for New Zealand lamb: Lamb International from 1971. The restaurant's highlight was the centrepiece "geyser," made of "clear PVC pipe through which bubbles of air and water passed." Water sprouted in "bands down the walls." Purple cloth covered the walls and a deep-red carpet completed the architectural décor. The perverse and radical nature of the architecture is made startlingly delightful. Interestingly, even though he worked on the project for a year, Michael Payne didn’t get to see it finished nor, he says, have a meal in the Geyser Room Restaurant.

While the government was promoting New Zealand architecture internationally, at home the decade saw a number of government buildings in various stages of construction. The Christchurch Town Hall (1966-1972) was completed, and the Michael Fowler Centre begun (1975-1983). English architect Basil Spence's Beehive (1964-1982), documented in the final film of this first segment (The Beehive (1978)), was continually "in progress."

2) The introduction of public television broadcasts in 1960, had introduced a new medium for advertising architectural products and representing new ideas about building and architecture. During the seventies, New Zealand became infected by the whims of stackable plastic furniture, townhouses, and a fabulous sense of interior décor. Television commercials demonstrate a range of building products and architectural interiors from the seventies. They also demonstrate the playing out of both old and emerging gender roles: men in yellow concrete trucks and demonstrating "daisy" stools, women revelling in the satisfaction of applying House of York wallpaper or Wearathon carpet, and engaging in age-old curiosities invoked by a neighbour's new Atlas oven.

In addition to being a site of sexual politics and the re-definition of gender roles, houses and housing were a medium for architectural experimental and a vehicle for grappling with contemporary issues of suburban life. The "flamboyant characters" of architects Roger Walker and Ian Athfield made this experimentation explicit and, according to Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, they "created an exciting vibe that ensured Wellington became the centre of architectural attention in the early 1970s." Both were reknown for their distinctive style of domestic architecture: Athfield's organic assemblages contrasting with, what Douglas Lloyd Jenkins describes as, the "hallucinogenic" character of Walker's work. Notes on a New Zealand City (1971) records architects Martin Hill and Ian Athfield discussing housing design, while a silent tour through the Auckland residence "Silver Waves," 78 Paritai Drive, (Draper Residence Paritai Drive Auckland (1971)), gradually reveals the debt its interior décor owes to the 1970s, culminating in upholstered and padded purple drawers and golden dolphin taps.

3) The current and recent debates about the bypass through Te Aro merely echoe debate which occurred about motorways in the 1960s and '70s. The sixties had demonstrated the lack of respect for architecture that civil engineering had, perhaps most notably with the Grafton Gully motorway demolishing architect John Goldwater's 1962 house in Auckland. The next selection presents two views on motorways from the 1970s: Joanna Paul's 1972 experimental examination of urban surface and texture: Motorway, firstly, the Ministry of Works and Development's, Stage Four (1974), a documentary of the construction of the Wellington Urban Motorway, and secondly William Sutch's and others opinions about urban problems and the aesthetic environment, in excerpts from Notes on a New Zealand City (1971). All present varying aspects of the debates around motorways and the built environment of cities. William Sutch (the well-known patron of Ernst Plischke's accomplished Sutch house in Brooklyn) is perhaps better known as being wrongly charged under the Official Secrets Act (1951) for passing state secrets to the Soviet Union in 1974.

4) In the seventies concerns about the urban and natural environment encouraged discussion about our cities and nutured the continuing political awareness about nuclear power contextualised by the Cold War. Issues of ecology, and how to negotiate future growth of infrastructure and energy use in daily life inevitably implicated architecture and the built environment. Concluding the programme, Environment 1990 (1972) is a futuristic look at the year 1990, from the position of the 1970s. It explores issues for future natural and built environments, discusses good design, conservation, and speculates about possibilities such as underwater cities. Experimentation with the medium of film and references to the writings of iconic thinkers, including: ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, scientist Arthur C. Clark, and architect Richard Buckminster Fuller (who visited New Zealand in 1964), shift this documentary from the realm of the ordinary and the mundane.

References:
Lloyd Jenkins, Douglas At Home: a century of New Zealand design (Auckland: Godwit, 2004)
Payne, Michael personal communication (email) Thursday 23 June 2005
Shaw, Peter A History of New Zealand Architecture (Auckland: Hodder Moa Becket, 1997; first published 1991)