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A House Is Born

Most houses are the brain-child of three parents—an owner, a designer and a contractor. The Demonstration House had only one. Despite this state of near-orphanhood it was not a neglected baby.

The House was conceived in the spring of 1948. The Architectural Centre faced the problem of finding a worth-while project as a Summer School. The previous summer had been well spent in producing the “Te Aro Flat” Exhibition. This year it Was decided that interest should be turned to the every-day problem of building, not in paper but in timber, not with ink but with perspiration, a problem that would be a challenge to the Centre's ability in design and construction.

Building a house nowadays is too much of an ordeal to be undertaken unnecessarily—let alone as a holiday exercise. But the idea would provide an excellent opportunity for getting practical experience in construction procedure, the lack of which is strongly felt in the world of text books and drawing-boards.

The child was not stillborn. Despite misgivings and fears, the Centre decided to proceed. A site was obtained and levels were taken. True, it was not everybody's choice, but it was accessible and had a good oudook; and in any case not every man who builds in Wellington can have level ground, and some must take it sloping away from the sunlight.

The design was the outcome of a competition between groups of students working under tutors. The hypothetical owner was to be a family man interested in his home, his garden, his books and his music. Fortunate indeed that he existed only on paper—such a man (and his wife) would have raised many posers, but possibly the conflicting ideas of a score or two enthusiastic students required equally careful handling. The competition produced an interesting range of solutions. The successful one was unusual (but not deliberately so) and capitalised brilliantly on the difficulties of the site.

November saw the working drawings and specifications prepared, and the other necessary “preliminaries” under way. December saw the students free from examinations and books. An experienced foreman was obtained and several students were employed on a full-time basis. Many more spent evenings and week-ends on the site. They found that “practical experience” was often obtained at the end of a pick or shovel. Specialist work like plumbing and electrical installation was done by contractors but students helped (and learned) where possible. Many city merchants were sympathetic. A number made donations of materials, others made specialist tradesmen available, and others loaned construction equipment. To everyone the project was a lesson in team work.

At the beginning there was an atmosphere of almost dangerous optimisih. The tedious preliminaries had all been handled without delay and the future looked bright. But the project had been planned as practical experience in modem building, and practical experience it turned out to be. True, there was no labour problem while the vacation lasted, but the students learned quickly that “shortages of materials” was more than a newspaper term.

March came, and summer was over. The students were again tied to lecture hours and studio work. The evenings were no longer light, the week-ends were no longer always fine, and the house was by no means finished. Work continued with more paid labour and with what week-end help could be obtained.

The child grew. At times it was a troublesome brat—it had a healthy appetite for materials which the market could not always satisfy, sometimes it demanded from its parent a reply to a question which they had not considered. But eventually it came of age, to the immense gratification of the worried “parent”—the group of tutors and students who had conceived it (each secretly imagining himself the owner).

What had been planned as a summer project had lasted until the following spring. There was less ambitious idealism apparent at the end, but the parent had learned.