The Studio yearbook of decorative art (1916)

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE IN NEW
ZEALAND. BY F. DE J. CLERE, F.R.I.B.A.
New ZEALAND is without doubt the most English of all the
British possessions outside the Home Islands. In consequence
of this similarity the people largely look to England for in-
spiration in house building, and those who seek for any marked
variety from the prototype may feel a little disappointed at seeing
garden city residences reproduced in numbers in the suburbs of the
towns of Maori-Land. The fact is that in many respects New Zea-
landers are little more than transplanted English people, and are opposing
in a vague and unconscious way those changes which a new environ-
ment and new conditions of living are of necessity forcing upon them.
New Zealand differs very materially from Australia (parts of which have
been settled since 1788) in one marked particular, and that is in the fact
that in New South Wales and Victoria, and, in a lesser degree, in the
smaller states, the people we meet are nearly all Australians. In New
Zealand, on the other hand, one half of the old and middle-aged people
are English, Scotch, or Irish, and they have no particular desire to en-
courage anything native, preferring rather to import books, pictures,
designs, fashions, etc., from the lands of their birth than to encourage a
National style in the land of their adoption. Notwithstanding this, the
circumstances surrounding life in a new country, especially the scarcity
of domestic labour, are forcing changes upon the people which un-
doubtedly have a decided influence over the planning and designing of
their houses.
Climate, of course, exerts a considerable influence over the requirements
of the householder, and in a country which embraces about thirteen
degrees of latitude, with a rainfall in some parts of over a hundred inches
in the year, while in other districts there are droughts sometimes for
months together, this is, of course, very varied. And when our English
cousins read of sleeping verandas and so forth, they must not assume
that these are general, or even common, in New Zealand. As a rule the
sultry nights of an English summer are unknown in the greater part of
the two Islands, and the prevalence of wind in most districts makes
“open air” treatment somewhat difficult to put into general practice.
Originally vast areas of New Zealand were covered with forest, and
timber was for many years by far the cheapest material to use in house
construction. Even the foundations were generally of wooden blocks,
and the roofs were covered with shingles split either from the totara or
from the kikatea. The former timber is exceedingly durable, and there
are roofs covered with it still in existence that must be fifty years old ;
the latter, on the other hand, was largely a swamp-grown timber and
was not lasting, being very subject to the ravages of the borer. These
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