Meticulous research reassesses mythologised “Group”
Group Architects: Towards a New Zealand Architecture
Julia Gatley
Auckland University Press - RRP $75.00
Publication -  October 2010

Group Architects – “the Group” for short – are New Zealand’s most mythologised firm of mid-twentieth century architects. They are known for their provocative calls for a specifically New Zealand architecture and for their modern houses, often characterised by exposed timbers, open-plan interiors and new attention to indoor-outdoor living.

The Group operated until 1968 when founder Bill Wilson died, yet their work lives on and has been a key influence on generations of New Zealand architects.

Surprisingly, a book by Dr Julia Gatley of The University of Auckland’s School of Architecture and Planning, is the first to be published on this significant Auckland firm.

Group Architects: Towards a New Zealand Architecture reveals the many different building types the Group produced, from gabled, courtyard and geometric houses to recreational, industrial and commercial buildings.

The book will be launched with an exhibition of the same name during Auckland Architecture Week 2010. The exhibition combines drawings, photographs, models, furniture, paintings and sculpture by members of the Group. Houses, the building type for which these modern architects are best known, are depicted in photographs and models. The exhibition also draws new attention to the firm’s non-residential work.

Julia says her work demonstrates that the interests, activities and buildings of Group Architects were much more diverse than had been imagined.
“This project offers a reassessment of a firm that is of fundamental importance to the post-war development of this country’s modern architecture and in particular it debunks the myths surrounding the Group and the idea of ‘New Zealandness’,” she says.

This book and exhibition follow Julia’s critically acclaimed first book, Long Live the Modern: New Zealand’s New Architecture, 1904-1984 (AUP, 2008), which encourages the heritage recognition of New Zealand’s modern architecture.

Julia Gatley, Group Architects: Towards a New Zealand Architecture (Auckland University Press, 2010, RRP $75.) The exhibition is at the Gus Fisher Gallery, 15 October – 27 November 2010 http://www.gusfishergallery.auckland.ac.nz./

Online exhibition
The University of Auckland’s Architecture Archive has an online exhibition on the Group, including a short film from 1950, showing their First House completed and their Second House under construction: www.architecture-archive.auckland.ac.nz/?page=exhibit