Architectural drawings see rare light of day

The drawings for the NZ Broadcasting Board Building, 1934, in Shortland St. Photo / Matthews and Matthews Architects

Buildings that were built. Buildings that were never built. Buildings that no longer exist. Ambition achieved and ambition thwarted are all on display at the Gus Fisher Gallery.

Canterbury University associate art history professor Dr Ian Lochhead trawled the archives of architecture schools and institutional collections to assemble what he considers the best examples of perspective drawing, the showpieces architects present to clients to sell them on a proposal.

The show has been 20 years in the making as Lochhead kept his eye open for outstanding drawings and waited for the right moment to bring them into the light.

It turned out there was a slot open at the Gus Fisher Gallery coinciding with the 26th annual meeting of the Australia and New Zealand Society of Architectural Historians in the gallery building - an ideal audience for the bravura displays of architectural drafting on show.

"People have been very impressed with the quality and range of drawings and want to know where the catalogue is," Lochhead says. "I'd like to develop the project, add another 15 or 20 drawings, and put them in a book."

They are not works which can be on permanent display. Many have watercolour washes which are sensitive to strong light, so they can only come out for brief periods.

The Romans knew about perspective, but it disappeared from Western art until the 15th century. "The emergence of archaeological reconstructions led to the rise of perspective and the idea of presenting buildings in context," Lochhead says.

Its use in architecture emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, driven by growing popular interest in architecture, competitions, and by changes in who was commissioning major buildings, with institutions and boards taking on the role rather than kings and popes.

Audiences unfamiliar with the arcana of reading plans and sectional drawings needed a way to visualise the proposed building.

"There are also cases, such as the drawing of the Anglican Cathedral by the Octagon, where the drawing helped in fundraising because people could see what they were putting their money into," Lochhead says.

Like several of the buildings in the show, the completed structure shown in the drawing was never built. Money ran out before the tower went up, and a different tower was built in reinforced concrete in the 1970s. "In that case the perspective drawing shows us what could have been but never will be. The drawing of St John's Cathedral in Napier was built, but destroyed in the 1931 earthquake."

Another unbuilt church tower was a wooden Gothic wedding cake planned for Lyttelton. "That is the earliest perspective drawing by a New Zealand architect," Lochhead says.

There is an interior rendering of the church Rangiatea at Otaki which was destroyed by fire in 1995 and faithfully rebuilt.

"What Barraud has done in that view is reduce the size of the people so the building looks loftier, which is a standard perspective device."

Lochhead is pleased to bring together drawings of the Auckland Museum, the former Dominion Museum in Wellington and S. Hurst Seager's Messines Memorial in Belgium, all World War I memorials which use classicism as a common architectural language in an attempt to make them timeless and universal.

"This concept of putting a building in a prominent place so we recognise it and admire what it is commemorating is something we have got timid about," he says.

Wellington planners were also too timid to follow through with the stately double avenue architect Francis Gordon Wilson wanted to run from the Dominion Museum and Carillion down to the Wellington waterfront which would have given the building an even more prominent relationship with the city.

"The perspectives give a sense of what might have been, the larger vision architects like to have and which is so often obliterated because of political or economic factors."

Apart from major public commissions, architects will sometimes do perspective drawings when they are trying to sell clients on radical departures for which there is no common reference point.

That is why the show includes drawings of Miles Warren's Dorset St flats, a simple concrete-block design which was radical in its time and set a trend for Christchurch and South Island architecture. There is also an early Group house in Milford, and a modernist Wellington building.

"It's at those moments of change that you tend to get perspective drawings showing a domestic house or unique house."

Warren is also included for his winning entry for the competition to build the Christchurch Town Hall, with unsuccessful entries by Peter Beavan and Paul Pascoe.

Alongside Lochhead's selections is a show of drawings from Matthews and Matthews Architects curated by Linda Tyler, the director of Auckland University's Centre for New Zealand Art Research and Discovery.

The Auckland firm represents 130 years of architectural practice, incorporating as it does the partnership of Wade & Bartley.

Highlights include Wade & Bartley's 1934 designs for the 1YA building in Shortland St where the Gus Fisher Gallery is housed, and a toolbox brought from England by the founder, Henry Greensmith Wade.

The marquetry chest was found in a K Rd antique store by furniture historian William Cottrell, who has filled it with the sort of tools Wade would have used in his original trade as a cabinetmaker.

EXHIBITION

What: New Zealand Architecture in Perspective: 150 Years of Architectural Drawing
Where and when: Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland St, to August 15
Talk: Centre for NZ Art Research and Discovery director Linda Tyler will give an illustrated talk on the architecture of the 1YA building, home to the Gus Fisher Gallery, followed by a guided tour through all four levels of the building, July 18, 1pm; free
Talk: Montana award-winning author, furniture historian and restorer William Cottrell will demonstrate the secret life of Henry Wade's toolchest at Gus Fisher Gallery on August 1 at 3pm; free