Megson News + A Masterpiece on the Market!

 

Apologies to readers for the long hiatus since my last post. Life and a global pandemic have got in the way!  

Not that life in the Megson world has slowed down: one of the most existing pieces of news has been the renovation of the award-winning Wong House in Remuera, its new owners restoring it immaculately to bring it back to life to become, again, a much-loved family home. 

A great reminder that these homes really are timeless, when well respected.

Wong house above and below. Pic from Stuff.

I had the good fortune over the weekend to visit three Megson homes myself. Unfortunately, one of them wasn't there.

The Jopling house in St Heliers has been featured here before. Unfortunately, it didn't feature at all in the plans of the new owners, who bought in 2021 and wasted no time in destroying it! Why? Driving past, one can see its replacement in framing stage -- and it's already clear it doesn't even make full use of its site, not even to take full advantage of the views the buyer must have paid so much for. 

It boggles the mind. Why pay for a site to destroy that thing on it which most gives it value? There is no rational answer.

Jopling House: Dining Room

Fortunately, another Megson house, near destroyed, still lives. The house in Arney Rd, Remuera, aka the Joan Mayes House (pics below), was already something of a whited sepulchre, previous owners having succumbed to the temptation to smear the house completely in art-gallery white. Worse, it appeared about to about to slide down the cliffside in Auckland's storms earlier this year. Closer inspection however reveals that the main damage to the house is to the extensive north-facing decking and outside living spaces which, it seems from my visit down the driveway (pics below), are the only areas presently off limits.

So some good news on the house's survival. It awaits its sympathetic owner.

The Joan Mayes House sits above the landslide, pictured from Shore Rd (above).
Pics below indicate the current official state of things. (Author's photos)

I paid a much more delightful visit to a house in the neighbouring suburb of Meadowbank: the house known to Megson lovers as the Barr House, after the delightful couple who first commissioned it way back in 1972.

The Barr House was featured here a few times back in 2016 (see here, here, and here), when I was lucky enough to meet aviation entrepreneur John and artist Pat Barr. 

The house, at 7 Keretene Place, Meadowbank, turns its back on the street to spill down down the slope to address the St Johns Bush Reserve. It has been sensitively and colourfully restored by its "new" owners Hayley and Mike (new, as in they and their family have owned and enjoyed it now for seven years), who now need to move away.

Which means it is all ready for a new owner to move in and fall in love with it!

Claude Megson's Barr House as she is today. (Pics by owner)

Yes, all this could be yours!

“Any buyer for this property has to have an understanding that you don’t own homes like these in the normal sense,” says Mike. “You are a custodian of them for a period.”

I'll write more about it soon, but in the meantime there are several websites already doing the job, including these:

• Claude Megson-designed Barr House seeks new custodian - Gil South, TRADE ME
• One for the fans: Legendary architect’s time capsule house hits the market with $3.45m CV - Catherine Smith, ONE ROOF
• Architectural Masterpiece- SOTHEBY'S NEW ZEALAND
• Claude Megson’s Barr House on the market - ARCHITECTURE NOW

And listen to architect Giles Reid, author of the book on Megson's houses, Counter Constructions, talk to RNZ here:

One of New Zealand's most distinctive architects Claude Megson designed around 40 homes during his 30-year career. Now for only the second time since it was built in the 1970s, one of his best-known homes the Barr House in the Auckland suburb of Meadowbank is up for sale. Architect and author Giles Reid joins Nights to talk about Claude Megson's legacy.

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* One welcome piece of new technology used by the Wong House's new owners is a rubberised liquid membrane system, then known as Wet Suit, which they painted over the typically complicated Megson roof. The product, by Neptune Pacific, is now sold under a different name, One Coat, and should be a boon to Megson owners -- not least because it can be painted over an existing Butynol roof, and has been Codemarked down to zero degrees!

Obituary

Moving files recently I uncovered this 1994 obituary from the Herald sitting in my files -- Claude sharing a page with Henry Mancini, which may have amused him ...

NB: As far as I know, although there is a thesis by Claude in the Auckland School of Architecture library that used to be available (back when there was an Auckland School of Architecture library) there were no books by Claude ever published -- although I'd love to be corrected on this. There were however many articles on him and his work, one of which was called 'Claude Megson -- Utopian Idealist.' It was by architect writer and force of nature Tony Watkins, and it appeared in the Nov/Dec 1988 issue of NZ Architect.  

Cocker Townhouses - #4/57 Wood St

Claude's Cocker Townhouses in Freeman's Bay have featured here before (here and perhaps most memorably here, when architect Ken Crosson revealed the they remind him "of the main character in Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart" looking out and being energised by the city's skyline) -- and if you're keen you can still see Ray White's pics of # 3 online here).

Now for sale is townhouse #4: the townhouse in the southwest quadrant. The one with the tower!

The recipient of the 2014 NZIA Enduring Architecture Award, what strikes you when you visit (taking advantage of the Open Home), is how much privacy each unit is afforded, and how little you are aware of your neighbours. Who are very, very close. Yet also how much all-day sun each unit enjoys, even in this densely-built little site. It is an ingeniously interwoven set of spaces.

Claude's planning diagram indicates the basic site layout of the four attached houses, the central driveway looking down the vertiginous Gunston St towards the city's towers, with  a ring of protective enclosure to each unit opening up to private open space beyond. An exercise in enclosure and openness -- and as always, Claude's entrances invite you through from darkness towards the light.

There is a little more enclosure in this particular house than there was in 1973 when it was born. And a few more mirrors and "etched glass" than Claude would countenance (his denunciations of architects desecrating the spaces he'd designed with their mirrors could, and did, consume whole lectures). The online Megson Guide describes the struggle that gave these beauties birth:

Originally built as an investment property for Bill Cocker (a lawyer turned painter) and his sister Finola - who now occupy two of the four units - the building took four years to complete and involved enormous wrangling with neighbours and the council. Riffing on the forms of nearby villas and hinting at Mediterranean hilltowns, this building is a complex composition of prismatic forms in white weatherboards with shingle roofs, overlaid with filigreed timber balconies. The living spaces of each unit open onto a private courtyard garden. Bedrooms are located on a floor above, and the roof-level turrets - accessed via trap doors - house small studies with panoramic views over the city and harbour. [See New Zealand Architect no.6, 1977, and Home & Entertaining Aug/Sept, 2002.]

Giles Reid's masterful Megson monograph features these townhouses as one of Megson's early masterpieces, writing that (as with every Megson home, "each of Megson’s rooms and every ritual contained in them was designed around precisely dimensioned furniture settings":

The building is the product of clients wanting both a degree of retreat from the city and to give back to the area. It freely converses with the language of its neighbouring villas and yet also asserts its own modernity.
    The townhouses’ construction is extraordinarily intricate: white painted weatherboards, timber doors and projecting balconies, slate roofs and metal gargoyles. There is even a watch tower, accessed through a smuggler’s hatch after a vertical climb. It gives one of the best views of the city’s skyline...

Wong House Update

Great news everyone!

Stuff reports that Claude Megson's award-winning 1967 Wong House, poorly-marketed as a demolition proposition, "has been saved from demolition" by the new buyers:

The award-winning Remuera cube house designed by renowned architect Claude Megson has been sold and will not be demolished.
Listing agent Holly Cassidy of Ray White Epsom says the house posed no concerns for the buyers when they went through the property. "They knew what to expect – what they would be walking into, so it wasn't a surprise for them.
"They have children and live locally, and they have been looking for a family home while renting. They are planning to renovate the house, but they say they won't be pulling down any walls or moving anything. But they will be reroofing and recladding with modern aluminium battens, not cedar (in a similar profile)."

The Wong House, 1965-67

Considered by a turn-of-the-century roundup in Home and Building Entertaining magazine to be among "The 50 Hottest [NZ] Homes of the Century" -- Megson would have been incensed to have featured down at 37 rather than straight in at number 1! -- the Wong House gave Claude his first NZIA Bronze Medal in 1969. That jury cited the creative weaving and interplay of space, which still remains.

What doesn't remain is some of the actual spaces, nor the original sculpture and stained glass, or timber weatherboards and timber joinery-- all long removed, or replaced with less sensorially delightful alternatives. Like smearing blancmange over beauty.

But that makes it no less desirable internally, nor in how it still so casually opens up the interior to its surroundings.

As the handy Megson guide describes it:

Cascading down a steeply sloping site, every room is expressed as an independent volume clad in dark-stained cedar weatherboards, the resulting composition a masterly interplay of material, line and volume.

Some of the interplay is still there, and the mastery can still at least be detected -- and in the right hands could be resurrected ...

There are open homes at the house on Saturdays and Sundays until sold (by 27 July, says the hopeful agent).

This is a fearfully difficult house to even see from the street, let alone explore. And since it is being marketed as a "create your individual home on (or over) its bones" basis, if you ever did want to see why it won for Megson an early-career Gold Medal, then these pictures and those few open homes may be your only chance.

Get along!

[Pictures from TradeMe, Ray White, Homes To Love, and the Digital Megson Guide]
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Enduring Architecture Award

Very happy to say that last night Claude Megson's Green House, in Glenfield, won an Enduring Architecture Award at the NZIA awards dinner. The judges said "to walk into the sculptural house is like stepping into a Mondrian painting."

Nice to see Megson's work being recognised, and his memory being kept alive.

NB: I posted about the Green house a couple of years ago, when it went on the market. By all accounts, the new owners' remodelling is a great success, and I'd love to hear more!
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And just in time for Christmas ...

The November 2nd issue of Paperboy magazine gives eight whole pages to Claude Megson Counter Constructions, the first ever book on the work of this important but neglected New Zealand architect. 

The shorter online version of the article is here, and asks: How did the brilliant, intricate work of architect Claude Megson disappear from view? Conclusion:

His reassessment is long overdue. 

The beautifully-photographed book is self-published by UK-based architect Giles Reid, with generous backing from the Warren Trust. So here's your reminder that the last recommended posting date from the UK for Christmas delivery is Saturday 9th December.

Your price of NZ$69.95 includes postage and packaging. To purchase, go to:

  http://www.counterconstructions.com/ 

I hope you will take a look.