Obituary: Hawke's Bay architect Guy Natusch wasn't one for following the herd

Guy Natusch, pictured in 2017 when he was a finalist for the annual Hawke's Bay Today Person of the Year award, for his work in trying to restore the Napier War Memorial. Photo / NZME

Guy Natusch might be described as a postmodernist.

So as a nod to postmodernism, let's start at the end.

Just over two weeks ago his doctor told him he had cancer.

Guy (my dad) blinked once and said: "Well, I'm glad I know now."

Architect Guy Natusch pictured in Tennyson St, Napier, outside a building that he designed. Photo / NZME

When he arrived at Cranford Hospice, the doctors and nurses gathered in his room and asked: "Is there anything you'd like to say."

"Oh yes. I have quite a lot to say," he said.

"First, I have to tell you I have been involved with hospital design for 60 years. I can certainly tell you a thing or two. Bring me the director."

The director came.

"This is a fine old building," he continued.

"When you make alterations to it, you must get a heritage architect to do a survey and write a report."

He lectured them while staff tried to take his temperature and blood pressure.

So in the last two weeks, he showed us how to take less good news.

Calmly. And at the hospice his performance, for it was a performance, and architecture is a performance art, reminded us that you have to focus on important things.

He helped many people: family, friends, journalists, architects, hospital people, civic leaders.

He was grateful particularly to Tim Judd, Neil Fenwick and Paul Dougan, who helped carry on his work.

The Natusch architectural firm began with CT Natusch in 1886, continued through three sons and appeared to end with Guy because the fourth generation didn't pick it up.

That was a shame but the spirit may have been reignited in the fifth generation with architect Claire Natusch.

He also shared a lifelong bond with his wife Joan. They'd known each other since high school and in his last hours he repeated her name several times even though he was not conscious.

He was never one for following the herd.

When he was head prefect at Hastings Boys' High School, he got the headmaster to change the school uniforms because the flannel shirts were too scratchy and itchy.

When he was in the Navy in World War II (sub-lieutenant, DSO) he was reprimanded for delivering a new motor torpedo boat around Lands End over its speed limit.

And his buildings were always unique and distinctive, never the same.

It's as if he were constantly conversing with the great architects. Mies van der Rohe, for example: "Less is more."

But he wasn't only about modern architecture. His work with the Historic Places Trust, his repurposing the Napier Fire Station into an iconic office building, subtly grafting a foyer on to the Municipal Theatre all reflected his concern for tradition.

This had developed from his visits to heritage sites in England in World War II and culminated in his receiving the MNZM for services to architecture.

After a break, his career as an architect restarted, at age 96, with the battle to save the Napier War Memorial. He said he owed a lot to the Rhodes family and many others for that.

As architect David Adjaye put it: "Buildings are not just artifacts ... they are sites of negotiation."

And as Napier mayors and councillors well know, negotiating is something he never gave up on.

He preferred not to be didactic, he taught by example:

His vision for his lakeside retreat at Rotoiti, Rotorua, built and added to between 1960 and 2010, was that it be a social centre where family and friends would gather to learn building, boating, bushcraft - and oh yes, the joys of bathing in only cold water.

It is said that when you are young you think you can change the world.

But when you get old you realise the only thing you can change is yourself.

Guy, however, was one of those rare people who could continue changing the way people thought throughout his life. Until the very end.

- Barry Natusch is Guy's eldest son