Megson House - Claude Megson

Here's architect Claude Megson's own house, above Dingle Dell in Auckland' St Heliers. A simple looking exterior concealing an awful lot of living within.

Writing about Claude's house a few years ago, John Dickson said of it, "It is impossible without the process of Megson's imagination to connect the cluster of small, confined rooms of the house as it was (right) to the expansive, multi-levelled, vertical-fissured, spatial-phantasm that it has become." And English architectural critic Professor Geoffrey Broadbent, writing after a 1992 tour of Claude's Auckland houses had this to say:

"This," I said to myself, "is work of a very high
international standard indeed." ...One is constantly struck by the surprise around the corner, the bright shaft of light penetrating from above into the softer glow of the main living spaces -- especially in Megson' own house -- that
give his work such very special qualities...

There is an essential "rightness" about Megson's spaces, for pleasant occupation by ordinary, normal human beings. Such things, says Dickson, have gone out of fashion with today's students. Well, so much the worse for the students [and their clients!].
Perhaps it hasn't occurred to them that if they design real spaces for human
comfort and pleasure, then even those anguished souls overwhelmed by post-Heideggerian "problematics" about the nature of their existence might, given spaces like Megson's to contemplate that nature of their "Being," come to more positive conclusions! Because that's the point about Megson's spaces; they are life-enhancing.

Broadbent, for once, is exactly right.

LINKS: The Claude Megson Blog

RELATED POSTS ON Architecture.

20 Walton Street, Remuera, 1974

This house is also known as the Norris house. A two-zoned house, it was one of Claude's own favourites. Description is from the Auckland Architecture Association site.

This Claude Megson designed home was winner of the 2005 Enduring Architecture Award.

- solid concrete construction/steel joinery
- offering poetry of light and space
- formal and informal living
- magnificent north western aspect with views to Hobson Bay and harbour.

Townhouse, 4/57 Wood Street

Auctioned Bayleys, 2PM, Wednesday
11th October, 2000

NO PICTURES AT PRESENT

Details from Taupo Property site

Residential Town House

4/57 Wood Street
Suburb: Freemans Bay
Area: Auckland City
Region: Auckland

Landmark Architecture.

Classic Claude Megson Architecture brings poetry of space amongst traditional Freemans Bay villa norm.
These 1975 townhouses brought fresh spatial relationships integrating the abstraction of design with the elements of place and aspect overlooking the inner city skyscape and harbour views.

Accommodation consists of lounge with fireplace, dining and kitchen opening onto courtyard garden.
Next level has two bedrooms and bathroom.
Above the bedrooms via a trap door you will find an abstract minaret or turret with small study and huge panoramic city/harbour views.

Features include:

Covered car parking
Large courtyard style garden
spa

Residential Townhouse
4/57 Wood Street
Freemans Bay, Auckland

2 Bedroom plus Study
108 Sq meters

Buyer enquiry range
Upwards of $300,000

54 Hapua St, Remuera

Auctioned 7 march, 2007.

This is part of a project in north-east Remuera, which included three connected ('semi-detached) townhouses. From memory, this is the largest of the three. [Correction: the three connected townhouses are at 64 Hapua. See comments below.]   Here's Barfoot's description:

Every now and again, an architecturally outstanding home comes along that is simply unique. Designed by the revered architect Claude Megson in 1974 with high ceilings and voids it presents an uplifting sense of volume and light filed spaces. This solidly built home on its own freehold 306m² site enjoys a quiet, leafy setting. Features 2 bedrooms, 1 1/2 bathrooms, separate living and dining areas which open to private courtyards and garden; including many original 1970's features. Perfectly positioned for optimum sun in winter and shade in summer, this could be your very own private sanctuary. A perfect natural setting just five minutes to the city.

What Architecture Is All About.

Claude Megson quoted in this article by Peter Cresswell: What Architecture Is All About.

Now we're at the halfway point of our architectural debate over at my main blog 'Not PC,' here's a brief meditation on what architecture is all about. In five words or less: giving meaning to our lives. To quote the late Claude Megson, "If it doesn't have meaning, then you're just wanking."

Read on now for the thousand-word meditation...

29 Whites Rd, Broomfield Peninsula, Whitford

From the Open2View site:

Suburb: Whitford

Area: Manukau City

Region: Auckland

Rooms:

5 bedrooms

2 bathrooms

Floor area: 220m² (2367 Sq. Feet)

Lot size:

Built In: 1

Broomfields Peninsular Location.

A private & spacious Claude Megson design home positioned beautifully for sun in sought after Broomfields Peninsular location. Sweep down the fabulous tree lined driveway past 3 grazing paddocks & enter this character filled 5 bedroom home with native bush outlook.

Peace & privacy assured on these magical 5 acres

Frankly, I don't think the furniture does much for the house.

Model of Megson's own house used to promote NZ architecture exhibition

Text and picture is from an article on an exhibition of models of NZ architecture, modelled with neither context nor landscape, which unfortunately is the way many see their architecture.

The picture selected to highlight the exhibition (above) shows Megson's own house, which was sited above Dingle Dell in St Heliers.

The article comes from University News, May 2005:

If you take away the conventionally defining characteristics of New Zealand residential architecture – site, response to surrounding landscape, orientation to views and sun, materials like weatherboards, corrugated iron, concrete blocks – what are you left with?

An architectural style that “is and isn’t” typically New Zealand, says
Architecture senior lecturer, Charles Walker (pictured above) who with
help from two recent University Architecture graduates, Minka Johnson
Ip and Elizabeth Seu Seu, has curated models for living 1905-2005,
currently on at the Auckland Museum.
Surveying 100 years of New Zealand residential architecture and
timed to mark the centenary of the New Zealand Institute of Architects,
models for living features 50 exquisite scale-models (1:50), built
from original plans by students and recent graduates of the School
of Architecture.
Hand-crafted out of white paper and white painted cardboard, the
models show iconic houses – the Group Construction Company’s First
House, for example, and former University lecturer Claude Megson’s
1983 Auckland home – stripped back to their elemental bones and
artfully displayed in solid glass cases.
“If they refer to the particularity of detail, these white fabrications
also strive for universality and anonymity,” writes Charles in the
exhibition catalogue. “Unlike the architects of the real projects, who
have generally sought to imbue each project with an individual identity
that only rarely refl ects that of the occupant of the house, the models
display the authorial reticence of Islamic miniatures – an art form in
which to reveal one’s stylistic idiosyncrasies is to court dishonour.”
Beginning with workers’ dwellings designed in 1905 by the Public
Works Department and fi nishing on a futuristic home designed by
Auckland graduates Dominic Glamuzina and Ernie Lau, the models
offer a compelling timeline of New Zealand architectural style.
Tauroa, a country mansion designed by colonial architect William
Gummer for a site on the rolling hills of Havelock North, is re-fi gured
back to its 1916 skeletal beginnings here, as are houses by architects
like Rotherham and Hackshaw (members of the renowned Group
architects who after World War Two began to merge modernists’
principles of simplicity, clarity and structure with a New Zealand
history of working in wood).
Viewers can peer through the glass at a model of the monumental
1957 Blumenthal home – the fi rst New Zealand house to be widely written about overseas – or they can ponder the three-dimensional rendering of Ken Crosson’s award-winning 2003 Coromandel Beach House. “When people talk about New Zealand architecture, they always
talk about the site, the landscape and the materials as if those were
the things that defi ne it,” says Charles.
“What’s interesting here is that in all these models you can see
international infl uences. Even though they’re typically New Zealand
houses in response to site and landscape, they’re part of a much
wider discourse.
“The architects of these houses have all been overseas or have
studied overseas architectural trends. They are quite urbane,
sophisticated people – even though in the case of the Group they
presented their work within the rhetoric of a Kiwi vernacular.”
Historically, New Zealand architects haven’t used models very much
so this exhibition offers a chance to see three-dimensional volumes and
proportions of houses that most won’t have seen. “Even architects know
most of these houses only through photographs,” says Charles.
More than 50 architectural students have spent hundreds of
hours making the models and Charles says it has been a very good
pedagogical exercise. “The students have had to study the buildings,
plans and drawings very, very carefully; because they knew the end
result was going to be seen by the public, it’s kept the standard very
high – they’ve really sweated blood for these.”
And there are more to come. This year students will be constructing
another 40-odd models that will be photographed and feature alongside
plans and drawings in a book, working title 100 New Zealand houses,
which Charles is currently writing for publication later this year.
Once all the models have been exhibited and photographed, some
will be distributed to architects, but many will be retained in the
Architecture School’s archive. Future students will be able to access
them as Charles concludes in his catalogue essay, examples of “intimate
investigations and engaged understandings of scale, proportion,
generative ideas and in most cases, good old-fashioned room planning”.

1/14a MacMurray Road, Remuera, Auckland

Description is from the Auckland Property site:

1/14a MacMurray Road
Suburb: Remuera
Area: Auckland City
Region: Auckland

Land area: 335 m² (3604.6 Sq. Feet)
Built in: 1975
Bedrooms: 2
Bathrooms: 2

Strong clean lines, soaring open

spaces, minimalist in style yet light and functional.
This 2 bdrm townhouse situated in a quiet Remuera street is a fine example of Claude Megson’s 70’s modernist architecture.
The ground floor open plan living, dining and kitchen areas are set in private courtyard landscaped with tropical and native plants. There is an open fire and underfloor heating for winter warmth and french doors to throw open in the summer for cooling breezes. Upstairs are two double bedrooms, master with adjacent study/3rd bedroom and two bathrooms.
With parking for 2 cars, ample storage spaces and situated just moments from Newmarket and Remuera and motorway and public transport access, this architectural iconic home offers a lifestyle of comfort and convenience

PRICE GUIDE: Vendor seeking offers in the region of $700,000.

Megson quoted in 'Architecture, Art & an Architectural Top Ten'

Megson quoted in this article: Architecture, Art & an Architectural Top Ten

Architecture is primarily about making spaces for human beings to inhabit, and in doing so expresses what it means for man to inhabit this earth.

The work is utilitarian, but not primarily so - in the words of the late New Zealand architect Claude Megson: "The architect is creating, not merely an object, but a whole universe for ourselves to inhabit." The architect creates an integration of structure, function and ornament according to the architect's own implicit values in order to make a home for man. The stuff with which the architect works is space - human space. To paraphrase Protagoras, man is quite literally the measure of all architecture.

Megson NZIA Regional Awards in the press

NZIA Regional Awards in the press, from the University of Auckland Architecture Archive.

• 1968 Merit Award Claude W Megson Jopling House St.Heliers, Auckland Star June 1, 1968; letter (SF)
• 1978 National Award Claude Megson. Norris House, NZArchitecture 1978 p25

Megson quoted in article about Group Architects' house

Claude Megson quoted in this NZ Herald article on a Group Architects house in Takapuna (pictured). Says the current owner:

"I remember lecturer Claude Megson [at the University of Auckland’'s school of architecture and a member of the group] talking about things like site orientation to the sun, ventilation, functionality and the flow of a house," he says. "It’s neat that those ideas really matter now and they were so on to it then.

Incidentally, I'm not sure that Claude would have recognised himself as a member of The Group. Anyone have any more information on that?

NB: This house is by Group Architects, not by Claude

LINKED ARTICLE: Takapuna: Back to the Future

7/79 Shelly Beach Road, St Marys Bay, Auckland

Doesn't really have the Megson look, to my mind, but was nonetheless sold under his name. Details from the AllRealEstate site:

ST MARYS BAY

These are the views that define Auckland! Designed by renowned architect Claude Megson as the answer to a secure, super low maintenance lock-up and go lifestyle, or as an apartment/penthouse alternative.

Built to commercial grade with a steel frame and premium cladding system, the floor plan includes 4 bedrooms, 4 luxury bathrooms, gym, sauna and garaging for at least 5 cars. Enjoy the latest acoustic technology, air conditioning and design trends. There is also a half share in the floodlit championship size tennis court.

Property Summary:

Category:

Apartment

Bedrooms:

4

Bathrooms:

4