KEY POINTS:
Last night's episode of Artsville: Ian Athfield Architect of Dreams (TV1, 11pm) confirmed a long-held suspicion. If you want a nice kitchen don't marry an architect. Or, don't be an architect. Athfield's an old hippy so it is possible he cooks too. His wife, Clare, said, slightly wistfully,
that, "I did have a decent kitchen... in 1965. But what happened? I can't remember. Oh, he added on to the end". He's still adding on to the end.
You could easily have made an entire documentary about the architect by making an entire documentary about the house he started building in Wellington's Kandhallah in 1976. The first thing he built on an impossible site (the previous owners had said you could never build on it, a red rag to any architect) was a shed. When the builder turned up to start measuring, he said: "Who the f*** built this?" The architect said: "'Me.' Proudly."
The shed was out three inches across the diagonals. I don't know how bad that is in building terms but presumably pretty bad. It came as no surprise to later learn that at this period the young architect had no work and set up a business "painting old buildings, badly" and putting up scaffolding, illegally, until sprung by the scaffolding police.
No, you probably wouldn't want him in your kitchen. If he started making a stew in 1976, he'd still be tinkering with it today.
He built his house and thought, given its prominent position, that people might see it and want him to design them a house.
"I didn't actually get work... I can honestly say no one has ever come to this house and said, 'I want something like this'."
His house is like a diary, said one of his architect mates, to whom he is always "Ath".
It "records a very individual journey".
He doesn't see it as a house. He sees it as "a community complex... as a model which questions suburbia". It is home and office space to 30-odd people.
He will probably never stop tinkering with it. It will probably never be finished. That would be like finishing exploring space, which is really what he does. "It's certainly optimistic. It's probably Utopian. But he's determined to make it work," said the mate.
This view into the inside of Athfield's head was very nicely done. It showed, and didn't insult us by telling too much. There were glimpses, left unexplained because they didn't need to be, that told us a lot about the man whose most famous public work is probably Wellington's Public Library. He did a building for the Selwyn District Council and, when he drove past it, he thought, "'that's a fairly elaborate fowl house in a paddock". He is capable of constantly surprising himself. He designed a house for author Alan Duff (since sold to pay creditors, which would break anyone's heart).
Duff said: "He came and got drunk with us and his dog killed our rabbits and he reversed over our letterbox..."
He designed a house for Sam Neill which the actor says is "a map of my DNA".
Architect of Dreams offered a delightfully meandering wander across the map of the architect's DNA and the inside of his head. Whoever decided to screen it at 11 on a Sunday night needs their head read.
