New Plymouth Redux

In 1975 I designed a large house perched high above New Plymouth for a local businessman. This was a challenge to a young frisky architect, and I gave it my best. My client ran a successful and innovative furniture company, based largely on wood as a material. Read More  Read More

Checking on the Children

I’ve been blogless for a few weeks – mostly head down working on this.  I took a breather just as Wellington’s worst southerly storm weather since Wahine day arrived.  The insurers have barely recovered from Christchurch. I’ve designed several houses around the South Coast and while I didn’t really expect architect designed and structurally engineered houses to have suffered too much, I felt a need to go and ‘check... Read More

Raising the Bar

While the majority of our work is residential (in all its manifestations) we’ve also had our share of designing bars, cafes and restaurants. In recent years Lone Star, Chow and Wholly Bagel (Thorndon New World ) have come across our drawing boards. In those jobs we attended mostly to the boring bits such as the layout, the location of the grease trap and the preparation of the Fire Report. In other words, all those matters requiring Building Consent... Read More

Roger Walker design features in international Architecture Atlas

The Britten House (1974) designed by Roger Walker features in a new international publication on 20th Century World Architecture.  It is one of six New Zealand buildings to feature in the book recently published by Phaidon to showcase over 750 of the most outstanding works of architecture built between 1900 and 1999. ‘Everyone likes to argue over best-of lists. But the admirable quality of Phaidon’s hefty new offering… boxes in... Read More

Park Mews – Wellington Modern

  Roger Walker’s Park Mews has been featured in Designer Hamish Thompson’s recent work “Wellington Modern”. The series includes an A1 poster and individual gift cards of Wellington’s most iconic modern architecture.     Support the local and celebrate NZ Architecture by clicking to buy a copy of the poster for yourself. Or look out for the fantastic cards in Unity Bookstore and other locations around town!        Read More

In memory of Centrepoint

The book  ‘Why Buildings Fall down’ by Matthys Levy,  Mario Salvadori and Kevin Woest, suggests that ‘gravity gets all buildings in the end’. Of the original seven wonders of the world, only one, the Great Pyramid of Giza, is still standing.  The reason is perhaps, that with its sloping sides,  it could be considered pre-collapsed. Our 1973 Centrepoint shopping centre, in the main street of Masterton, may have been one of the seven wonders... Read More

Airport terminal on the rocks?

Love it or loath it, ‘The Rock’ at Wellington Airport, welcomes visitors to a unique place, with a unique building. It doesn’t directly add any more visitors to the airport, but it does make their arrivals and departures more memorable and this is clearly its purpose. 30 years ago we did the same thing for Whakatane Airport. Our clients, the District Council, wanted a ‘gateway’ building that would welcome visitors to the Bay of Plenty.                     They... Read More