Architect’s brutalist style transformed the face of NZ
Sir Miles Warren
architect b May 10, 1929 d August 9, 2022
When architect Sir Miles Warren learned that much of his life’s work had been destroyed after the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes, tears came to his eyes.
His friend and fellow architect Barry Dacombe had been inside the Christchurch city centre red zone and seen the destruction. He told Warren about the fate of the many buildings he had designed for his hometown.
‘‘You could see the tears welling in his eyes. It was tough,’’ Dacombe said.
It must have been a particularly painful moment for a man who had dedicated his life to architecture, designing striking brutalist buildings across New Zealand and the world from the 1950s onwards. His buildings were so ubiquitous in his home town that the style he developed was simply known as the ‘‘Christchurch School’’.
After the earthquakes, many of these buildings were turned to dust in a matter of months.
But there were many heroic and groundbreaking survivors from the quakes, including College House, Harewood Crematorium, the practice office in Cambridge Tce, and the Christchurch Town Hall, a masterpiece that he personally fought to save from demolition after the earthquakes.
Beyond Christchurch, there were the Civic Offices in Rotorua, Television New Zealand Network Centre in Auckland and the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, along with projects in Washington DC, New Delhi and New York. It was a built legacy forged by devoting almost every waking moment to architecture.
Warren, who died earlier this month at the age of 93, harnessed his intuitive design flair with his business savvy and sparkling charm to build an empire. He was always chasing what he called ‘‘the main chance’’ – the big commissions that allowed him to redefine postwar architecture.
This drive and devotion came at a cost. His relatives were proud of his achievements but remember him missing family occasions, and work colleagues recall his explosive temper as he drove the practice to excellence.
But Warren would leave a powerful legacy beyond his built work. His designs would transform the face of New Zealand architecture and change the way the country thought about and experienced the built environment.
His public generosity also survives. A trust he established In 2006 has given $2 million towards architecture education, while in 2012 he gifted his heritage home and garden outside Christchurch to the nation. He also helped protect many heritage buildings in Christchurch, including rescuing the Isaac Theatre Royal from dereliction in the 1980s.
Warren was born in Christchurch and started working at the office of architect Cecil Wood when he was 16. He moved to England in 1953 and worked at the London County Council, where he witnessed the birth of brutalism.
After returning to New Zealand, he established a business partnership with Maurice Mahoney in 1958 when they were both in their 20s. The practice they formed together, Warren and Mahoney, would dominate New Zealand architecture for the next 60 years.
Warren said the partnership worked ‘‘because each of us supplied what the other lacked’’. Mahoney’s daughter, Jane Mahoney, said in 2018 that the pair were ‘‘chalk and cheese’’.
Warren was ‘‘the ideas man and the bigpicture vision’’, while Mahoney was ‘‘working through the details and turning something into a reality’’.
A small block of flats designed by Warren in Dorset St, Christchurch, in 1956 was an early declaration of intent from an architect who once famously declared that he had never met a straight line he didn’t like.
In his eulogy at Warren’s funeral, Dacombe said the building’s elegant design and use of concrete blocks expressed the ‘‘essence of new brutalism’’ through the ‘‘exploitation and celebration of the truth of raw materials’’.
He said the flats were branded by tour bus drivers as ‘‘the ugliest buildings in Christchurch’’, but the accolade was ‘‘the best advert ever for a breakthrough young architect to get noticed’’.
They were the first of many groundbreaking homes designed by Warren, including the famed Ballantynes’ house and his own parents’ home in Queens Ave, but he was not content to remain in the domestic realm.
In 1965, Warren and Mahoney won a competition to design the Christchurch Town Hall. The brutalist cultural complex on the banks of the Avon River, completed in 1972, was perhaps the firm’s crowning achievement. It was celebrated for the acoustics and intimate sightlines in the main auditorium.
Famed conductor Leonard Bernstein performed at the Town Hall in 1974 and was full of praise. ‘‘I’m crazy about it – very envious, I wish we had something like it in New York,’’ he told The Press. ‘‘I was very impressed by that combination of vastness and intimacy that the architects have somehow achieved in the hall itself.’’
But success did not come easy. Dacombe, who worked at Warren and Mahoney for 40 years from the 1960s, remembers Warren driving his employees hard.
‘‘Working with Miles was an incredibly rich experience, full of vicissitudes as Miles’ moods moved from the excitement of challenging commissions to, at times, the lows of missing out on them,’’ Dacombe said in his eulogy.
‘‘His moods could certainly be challenging as he raged around the studio draughting room, berating individuals for not meeting the high standards he had set. No-one was spared. [But] no sooner had the outburst occurred, it was over, and Miles would return to his chatty, pleasant self.’’
And the success was often at the expense of other aspects of his life. His niece, Sarah Smith, said Warren once missed the christening of his goddaughter because he was working on a Sunday.
‘‘We all knew he was very much a part of our small family, but we all knew that his heart and his life and everything was involved in his work and his architecture. He didn’t always make family gatherings, but we were all very proud of what he did.’’
He found respite restoring his historic homestead, Ohinetai, above Governors Bay at the head of Lyttelton Harbour.
Warren bought the dilapidated property in 1976 with sister Pauline and her husband, John Trengrove. They set to restoring the home and creating an ornamental garden in the grounds.
‘‘It was very relaxing, the physical process,’’ Warren said in 2012. ‘‘We were amateurs practising an art rather than having to be professional architects. We didn’t have a client and we could do what we damn well liked and make our own mistakes.’’
His sister and Trengrove left in the 1980s and Warren bought their share. He had hoped to remain at the home until his death. ‘‘I will live here as long as I can, but at some stage I might be known as that grumpy old bastard on the first floor.’’
Warren retired from his practice in 1995 but remained an active advocate for architecture. He spoke in favour of a new building in Christchurch’s Arts Centre, waded into the row over the future of the earthquakedamaged Christ Church Cathedral and successfully campaigned to rescue the Town Hall from demolition. He delighted in the restoration of the Town Hall and cut the ribbon when it reopened in 2019.
He left Ohinetahi just after his 90th birthday in 2017 and moved into a retirement village as he became too frail to get about the large house.
But Smith said he still had a keen interest in the rebuild of central Christchurch, getting updates on the restoration of the cathedral and new buildings like Ravenscar House.
In her eulogy, she summarised her uncle’s life. ‘‘Miles was described by my father as a difficult man. He was very much his own person and absolutely dedicated to the art of architecture and the arts in general.
‘‘He has left an amazing legacy in his buildings, his house and garden, and the numerous substantial gifts he has made to both the arts and architecture and the preservation of heritage buildings.
‘‘He is a true New Zealand icon. We as a family dearly loved him and he will be greatly missed by us all.’’ – By Charlie Gates