A look at New Zealand's modern architecture. Modern architecture is built into the fabric of our lives. From skyscrapers to state houses, Auckland’s motorways to Dunedin’s public library, modernist design and construction deeply influence our experience of life in New Zealand. Long Live the Modern celebrates 180 buildings, sites and neighbourhoods designed by New Zealand’s most accomplished architects. They show how international ideas were adapted to New Zealand concerns, climates and conditions to create a unique local modernism.

Succinct entries outline the design, construction and history of each building and are generously illustrated with architectural drawings and historic and contemporaryy photographs. Auckland’s Civic Theatre, Harbour Bridge and Tamaki state houses appear alongside Wellington’s Freyberg Pool, Athfield House and Beehive. Other buildings include Ernst Plishke’s Church of St Mary in Taihape, Warren and Mahoney’s Dorset Street Flats in Christchurch, Cedric Firth’s Monro Building in Nelson, John Scott’s Maori Battalion Memorial Hall in Palmerston North, and the H. B. Williams Memorial Library in Gisborne.

The buildings showcased in this book – both familiar and unknown – are integral to the New Zealand we built in the twentieth century. They provide 180 reasons to shout ‘Long live the modern!’

Author

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Reviews

. . . this is a most impressive work, one which serves both as a reference and an inspiration to search out one of the most exciting chapters in New Zealand’s architectural history. – Christopher Moore, The Press

This hard-back book encompasses just 80 years of our recent history, yet it pulls together an enormously disparate range of architectural styles. - Mary Shanahan, Hawkes Bay Today

This substantial, handsome reference has details of significant buildings, sites, neighbourhoods and amenities designed by New Zealand’s most accomplished 20th Century architects. Some of the more well-known are the Civic Theatre in Auckland and the National Tobacco Company Building in Napier. - Jesma Magill, Pakuranga Times