50 years of Award-Winning Architecture Celebrated

50 years of Award-Winning Architecture Celebrated at Christchurch’s College House at the Weekend

Warren and Mahoney’s ‘finest loos in Christendom’

Renowned Christchurch architects, Sir Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney who established the architectural firm Warren and Mahoney in the late 1950s, celebrated with College House alumni and students on Saturday to mark its 50 years on the University of Canterbury’s ‘new’ Ilam site in its award-winning buildings and quad. College House opened on the Waimairi Road site in 1966.

Warren and Mahoney won the New Zealand Institute of Architects’ (NZIA) Gold Medal in 1969 for its work on College House, and then won the NZIA Enduring Award in 1999.

The College House site comprises the Waimairi Road street-frontage block of the double-height dining hall, with the quad behind, eight of the original houses (there are now 11), the chapel and library.

The University of Canterbury gradually moved from its overcrowded town site to Ilam over the 1960s and early 1970s. College House was the first hall of residence to be built on the University’s new campus.

Sir Miles Warren says,”The very conservative College House board took quite a punt in asking us to design its new hall in Ilam. Maurice and I were in our early 30s and although we had a good portfolio under our belts, the College House commission was very exciting for what was then a very small architectural practice.

“We decided that the Oxford-Cambridge model of houses, or ‘sets’, built around a quad would suit College House’s beautiful new site very well. This was quite a different model from the usual type of university hall of residence where there were long corridors with bedrooms on either side. Donald Dobson, College House’s Bursar at the time, gave us our brief: A college for 120 men. You are supposed to know what you are doing Warren. Get on with it.

“Each study bedroom was spacious, and faced north for sun and warmth. This was quite a new concept for university accommodation. We balanced the domestic scale of the quad with the taller library building at the east end. The chapel, built a year or two later, is even taller with its long narrow shape which thrusts itself into the quad. And then we finished off the dining hall and chapel with butterfly-shaped roofs. The joke was that we had used the W-M shape for Warren and Mahoney, which wasn’t quite true, but it made a good story and it’s endured to this day!”

Sir Miles says he used his experience as a student at the University of Auckland when designing the bathrooms on each floor of the eight houses. “At Auckland there were all sorts of student pranks with baths flooding and the water went all the way through each floor – and as students we had to pay for the damage. To prevent this happening at College House, we placed the bathrooms in separate blocks, but still attached to each house. The Royal Institute of British Architects’ journal of the time said they were ‘the finest loos in Christendom’.”

Looking back, Sir Miles says the College House quad is one of the most memorable spaces produced by Warren and Mahoney. The chapel is, he says, “Our finest room”.

Alumni and students gathered with Sir Miles and Maurice Mahoney on Saturday to celebrate the 50 years at Ilam with afternoon tea and tours of the buildings. A formal dinner was held in the evening.

Chairman of College House’s board Anna Wilkes says, “We are delighted to celebrate this 50-year milestone with Sir Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney. Their architecture, in what was called the ‘Christchurch School’ of white-painted concrete block, has stood the test of time very well. It works as well for us all today as it did 50 years ago. Our students are all very proud to live in what has become a truly iconic campus.”

Established in 1850, College House is New Zealand’s oldest university hall of residence. It accommodates 159 University of Canterbury students who live in 11 houses that surround the quad.

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