Notes on some buildings by Sir Miles Warren
An early example is 65 Cambridge Terrace (1968), Christchurch. Part Mondian painting in its asymmetrical balance of visual masses, it’s overall structure Brutalist, and simultaneously a broken pediment that recalls Robert Venturi’s 1963-5 Chestnut Hill house for his mother, and Pancho Guedes’ ‘House of the Broken Pediment’ in Portugal.
The Bornholdt House, Hill Street in Wellington (1985-88), might be said to fit the description of a ‘Noddy house’ with pseudo-Tuscan gables, but in fact has more kinship with Robert Venturi’s punctuated voids and asymmetrical symmetry – itself derived from the Queen Anne Revival style. The austerity, architraves and pediments of this building give it an almost Albertian flavour. Other possible affinities include James Stirling and Michael Wilford, Robert Krier, and the Disney-isms of Michael Graves. Its classical form relates directly to Warren’s houses of 1960-61. It evokes a kind of moulding-less, hygienic ‘sixth order of architecture’ ultra-Tuscan rendered in vernacular materials like the weatherboard inherited from the traditional Wellington hill villa.
The Constructivist Classicism of the Lyttelton Harbour Building (1988) appears to have its origins in a compacted down version of Philip Johnson’s AT&T building (1979-84) in New York, complete with the instantly recognisable Chippendale split pediment, the hint of Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel, and Alberti’s San Andrea in Mantua also referenced by Johnson. To this has been added a peristyle porch which extends out into neo-Palladian wings. The slender columns extend from a raised garden reminiscent of a rusticated basement level, contain the Miesian glass curtain of the piano nobile, and engage with the unusual balconied entablature, all together creating the impression of a Renaissance urban palazzo designed for Buck Rogers and painted Travertine white.
Warren’s Redcliffs House (early 1990s), Christchurch also has a strongly Venturian quality comfortably comparable to Gordon Wu Hall (1982-4), Princeton, combined with something strongly suggestive of a primitivist Streamline Art Deco. The main entrance is also resplendent with a curved split pediment and lunette window.
