Architect Claude Megson: A new book!

 

Page from new book Counter Constructions | Claude Megson. Photo by Jackie Meiring.

I’m excited to reveal here for the first time that there’s a new book about architect Claude Megson that has been lovingly put together by folk as excited about Claude’s architecture as I am—and if I’ve now used the word “excited” three times in this sentence (there you go), that’s because that’s exactly how this news makes me.

It’s a new book, Claude Megson|Counter Constructions, authored by Giles Reid and—as you can see by the pics here—brilliantly photographed by Jackie Meiring. (Order your copy here. I already have!)

Barr House entrance hall, in pages from new book Counter Constructions | Claude Megson.
Photo by Jackie Meiring.

It’s not yet the full appraisal of Claude and his career that his ouevre demands. That will come. What it is does feature wonderfully however, as the blurb says, is “five of his most significant houses, designed in the 1970’s, when his architecture was at its most daring and experimental.” And they are beauties!

1972 Barr House
1973 Norris House
1973 Cocker Townhouses [which won an Enduring Architecture Award just last year]
1974 Rees Townhouses [respectfully upgraded recently]
1977 Bowker House

The book reproduces a number of Megson’s richly detailed drawings, from his sketches through to construction documents.
    The heart of the book is a photo essay by Jackie Meiring, bringing Megson’s best works to life and showing how they are lived in today.
    The [title essay by architect Giles Reid] provides an introduction to Megson’s career, considers his current reputation and analyses the five houses. It explores how Megson:

1. Organised space through diagonal views and movement
2. Tied the building to a cultivated landscape
3. Articulated their external appearance with the ‘house image’
4. How he invoked ritual as the means to challenge social conventions

Books are on sale from 18 October. On sale only from the book’s website, order your copy now (it would make an ideal Christmas present, wouldn’t it).

Page from new book Counter Constructions | Claude Megson. Photo by Jackie Meiring.

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2/64 Hapua St, by Claude Megson

 

I’ve posted some of its beautiful Megson neighbours before (3/64, 54), and now that it’s on the market you can explore the inside of this smaller one-bedroom Megson townhouse/apartment that can still boast a mostly-original interior.

This is one of those very small places that genius makes appear large (even though the furniture arrangement shown has confused lounge and dining spaces): simple things like viewshafts front to back, borrowed scenery, full-height French doors, exposed rafters, subtle changes in level and height, cunningly-placed storage, all-day sun through the lantern over the central dining space, overlapping and nested spaces etc. All very thoughtfuly done, and very efffective indeed at turning a small jewel into what feels like a large-souled space.

Megson used to talk about a house being something you would sometimes want to wrap around yourself like a cloak, and other times just disappear. This small place fits the bill.

NB: If you’re keen to experience it properly, in the flesh,, there are Open Homes this Saturday and Sunday avo.

[Pics by Ray White Real Estate. Cross-posted at the Claude Megson Blog]

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Barr House, by Claude Megson

 

 

Megson’s Barr House, from 3d model

I posted a plan and a few pics a few months back of Claude Megson’s wonderful Barr House, saying at the time that it is so far undeservedly unpublished (soon to change, watch this space). With his growing sophistication in manipulating space came a floor plan (above) that very few can follow. Until now!

A little 3d modelling of the house, and we have these model views and cutaway floor plans that make the house and its changes in level a little easier to fathom for those who haven’t been lucky enough to visit.

Ground-level floor layout

Upper-story floor layout

You can hopefully see much more clearly the beginning of the two-zoned house concept that bore fruit majestically in mature work like the Norris House, but used here at the Barr House much more geometrically.

Street Entrance: Motor Court

Lounge

Dining

Lounge Courtyard

Breakfast

Afternoon

Mezzanine

Master Bed

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Barr House, by Claude Megson

 

 

Megson’s Barr House, from 3d model

I posted a plan and a few pics a few months back of Claude Megson’s wonderful Barr House, saying at the time that it is so far undeservedly unpublished (soon to change, watch this space). With his growing sophistication in manipulating space came a floor plan (above) that very few can follow. Until now!

A little 3d modelling of the house, and we have these model views and cutaway floor plans that make the house and its changes in level a little easier to fathom for those who haven’t been lucky enough to visit.

Ground-level floor layout

Upper-story floor layout

You can hopefully see much more clearly the beginning of the two-zoned house concept that bore fruit majestically in mature work like the Norris House, but used here at the Barr House much more geometrically.

Street Entrance: Motor Court

Lounge

Dining

Lounge Courtyard

Breakfast

Afternoon

Mezzanine

Master Bed

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‘Hill House’ by Claude Megson

 

Not exactly a Claude Megson house any more – though it does retain something of the floor plan, some of the character, and nearly all of the glorious setting…

The original house was commissioned from Megson by Michael Hill, a Whangarei jeweller – but the fire that destroyed the house helped make him Michael Hil Jeweller. “It made me realise I'd been playing life too safe,” says Hill now.

So what actually happened was of course we built a beautiful home in Whangarei… we got Claude Megson, who is now the guru of architecture probably of New Zealand, looking back on some of those old drawings, and he had the most magnificent plan, the hexagonal house. And it was supposed to take nine months to build, and Claude is artistic and had no idea about costs and it just blew completely out. So it took two and a half years to build and it was very, very tough but it was quite a masterpiece actually, and in fact there was lots of similarity with [my current home]except it was in a hexagonal pattern. It was well beyond our means, but we completed it, and it was really for a gold medal for New Zealand. Claude was going to get a gold medal …
    And we went to the pictures one night, and of course came out and Christine answered the telephone and Mr Strongman from along the road, was the one that called and saying, “Mrs Hill, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your house is on fire.” And I’ll never forget that night. We got into Christine’s Mini and roared along the road …and we’d turned round the corner and there right across, about a mile across the bay, in the bush you could see all the windows were orange and there were big flames. They were licking about 60 foot above. The house was just an explosion of flames and I realised it was all over.
    And that night as I drove towards that fire, it was the night I made the decision that I had to buy my uncle out, which I did.

The house seen here is the house resurrected years later from that fire – and is now for sale! The estate agent’s site (from whom these photographs have been gratefully taken) says

Over time and between 2008 and 2011, the house has gone through major rebuild and modernisation, keeping the integrity of the designer and staying true to the original design concept of the modular hexagonal rooms. This masterpiece is a combination of intimate inter-related spaces, planned with family use in mind.

That certainly describes what Megson had in mind.

The original three-zoned house was designed to sit, not in the middle of the site as would have been so common, but around the edges of the site to best capture the views, embrace the site, and keep the larger expanse open for play. ( I seem to recall plans showing the pool and house at different corners of the site, with the walk between them along the site boundary, looking out across the harbour.)

The hexagonal geometry of the house was an organic development from site and programme – the grid itself “systematising the structure,” the hexagonal coming from the isosceles formed from “lining up centres.”

Click here to take Bayleys's 3D tour through the house.

This is a site diagram based on notes I made in a lecture on the house Claude delivered in 1988:

[All photos by Bayleys. Site diagram by PC.]