Athfield Architects

Local Description

Review:

...the book is meticulous, scholarly yet accessible, and a gorgeously presented record of 200 Athfield Architects projects since the 60s. - Chris Barton, NZ Herald

This is a study and a survey of living-spaces designed for human experience in the architectural language of late modernism. Gatley demonstrates a keen understanding of this style and analyses her subject’s development of its principles in relation to the needs of this practice’s varied clients in Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond. - Cassandra Fusco, Takahe

Athfield Architects is a fabulous document of one of New Zealand’s most inventive architects. - Tim Gruar

Description

‘Architecture is a social statement that has a responsibility beyond the building, the client and the architect.’ – Ian Athfield

Over many years, Ian Athfield and his team at Athfield Architects have reshaped New Zealand architecture – from the Buck House at Te Mata Estate to Wellington’s Civic Square, from Jade Stadium to Athfield’s own sprawling settlement on the Khandallah hills. Reflecting on half a century of work, Julia Gatley’s landmark book introduces a major body of architecture that will lead readers through modernism, postmodernism and beyond. Its four-part structure traces Athfield’s formative years; the fledgling firm and its radical 1960s and ’70s houses; its important break into commercial work; and finally its impact in the public, urban and institutional realms.

Athfield Architects combines newly commissioned photography, evocative original architectural drawings and a rich text informed by extensive archival research and interviews with key figures in the firm. Taking us from the slums of Manila to the streets of post-quake Christchurch, this major book shows how New Zealand’s leading contemporary architect is transforming the way we all might live.

 

Author description

Dr Julia Gatley is a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning at The University of Auckland. She has edited two bestselling and critically acclaimed books for Auckland University Press, Long Live the Modern: New Zealand’s New Architecture, 1904–1984 (2008) and Group Architects: Towards a New Zealand Architecture (2010).