Quote of the week

Auckland, last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart. Rudyard Kipling. Quite the quote for a Design Notes entirely dedicated to the work and memory of Marsh Cook, a giant of Auckland, and Kiwi, architecture.

Marsh Cook, NZ Architect

It's sad to convey the recent passing of Marshall Thomas Cook, New Zealand's finest domestic architect.

For most of his practicing life Marsh was devoted to developing homes that drew upon historical and world-wide ideas to forge an architecture utterly appropriate to its location, and for the most part that was Auckland. He was a driving force in New Zealand architecture for almost sixty years, recognised with the NZIA Gold Medal in 2010.

He firstly joined with Terry Hitchcock, an architect with a traditionalist’s eye, and later the more modernist Peter Sargisson, to form Cook Hitchcock Sargisson, a practice centred on housing, where the three practitioners each evolved their own style.

The Cook Hitchcock Sargisson practice saw countless architects pass through its doors to great careers, including Mike Thompson, a founder of the original Architectus; Lindley Naismith, founder of the feminist practice Scarlet; and Julie Stout, redoubtable champion of Urban Design and herself a winner of the NZIA Gold Medal.

Marsh Cook, home creator

Marsh’s house designs were varied and different, but all were generated in response to the activities of family life. Houses often had separated wings for adults, guests and children, enabling families to grow and change, using different rooms or wings as children grew, left, came back and had their own children. They were flexible multi-generational homes before the term was popularized.

He believed houses should be designed for parties. One perfect example was the foyer / entry to the Cook family house in Parnell: a big room or grand hall with just one large table and without specific purpose, other than a dozen possibilities. Its large front doors opened onto a view down over the Hauraki Gulf / Tikapa Moana and acted as an informal meeting space.

The room was once described by close friend, architect David Mitchell, as a ‘street’, one that gave you access down to the kitchen, over to the living room, upstairs to Marsh and Prue’s quarters or turn left to guest quarters and the children's wing. It’s a beautifully proportioned double height orientation space, with upper-level shuttered openings opening into the street. Seen here in daughter Sophia's wedding to Peter.

NZ State Housing / Kāinga Ora

Marsh offered help, free of charge as it turns out, in fixing issues with ‘State Housing’ in the early 2000s. New Zealand maintains a public housing system, called Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities, that puts Australia to shame, but that is for another time (and it will resurface given this column’s interest in social housing).

Upon hearing that there were issues linking poor health to State Housing, Marsh offered his diagnosis: better ventilation, insulation, heating and better design of minor alterations. He drew up plans accordingly. Early results showed an almost 20% decline in presentations to health clinics. And he refused payment when offered.

Marsh Cook, teacher

He was a longtime teacher, gaining experience in London as a young architect, before returning to Auckland to teach at its then only architecture school. In early 2000s he started teaching as an adjunct professor at the new course at the architecture school at Unitec, only stopping a year ago. For several years I joined him as an ‘adjunct’ and witnessed his championing of Pacific Islanders and Māori.

Marsh had a wide circle of friends that trusted his judgment on architectural matters and his seemingly indefatigable encyclopedic knowledge of world architecture. Ever the teacher and supporter, whenever I visited, he would not only show me his latest work, but was keen for me to see the recent work of other architects like Fearon Hay or Pip Cheshire or Pete Bossley or Architectus or the many others whose work he celebrated.

Like many New Zealand architects, such as Ian Athfield, Roger Walker and David Mitchell, he saw NZ’s position as ‘last, loneliest, loveliest’ as giving a license to do whatever the hell you wanted. At the end of the world, no one was watching, and you could do whatever was culturally appropriate, without having one eye on ‘world’s best practice’ that so bedevils so many Australian practices.

Without consciously mimicking or referencing or wanting to be world standard, they have become just that, with Marshall Cook as one of its main protagonists. No nuclear, a treaty with Māori, and great housing.

Vale Marsh Cook

One-time employee and long-time friend, Julie Stout, provided a most beautiful eulogy from afar, read at the memorial service last Friday. She framed it thus: “how pivotal he was in my life in many ways, life seems so much paler without him”.

Vale Marshall Cook - what sadness to realise that honey warm voice will never more proclaim - his greetings, his thoughts, his declamations. I'm writing this from a rooftop bar overlooking the Bosphorous, a place he knew and loved. It was Marshall who knew Kahurangi, a wonderful Auckland yacht, now in Turkey, just waiting for adventures.

Marshall always knew these things. Infuriatingly so at times. Marshall was the most generous person I knew - especially of his time and knowledge. He transformed the lives of many of us young students by including us in the comraderie of the architectural community. With Prue, he loved connecting threads and people. He knew how to make a place a home, how to shape a space and why.

Auckland and we are so much better for him being in our lives.

Thank you, Marshall, love you and mourn you. Time turns to stone.

Bookends

When I studied in Auckland all those years ago, Marsh Cook introduced me to his friend Robin Morrison, a brilliant photographer, much interested in architecture, particularly the historic and quirky. His best book (according to me) is The South Island of NZ from the Road. It made such an impression I set off to find and photograph, in ‘le style Morrison’, these vernacular buildings. It led me down the path of modesty, integrity and ‘joie de vivre’ in architecture that I have sought ever since.

Signs off

Marsh Cook loved this sign, which is prominent on our way to the architecture school at Unitec. The irony of the word ‘modern’ in pseudo-Gothic scripture script. Delightfully oxymoronic for an architect committed to combining old traditions and new ideas. How to Live, was Marsh Cook’s suggestion for the title of a putative book on his work. Says it all really.

Next week

Where do we go to in design when the nation says it doesn’t want to listen to a proffered voice?

Tone Wheeler is an architect / the views expressed are his.

These Design Notes are Tone on Tuesday #183.

Past Tone on Tuesday columns can be found here

Past A&D Another Thing columns can be found here

You can contact TW at toneontuesday@gmail.com

Architecture & Design Team

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