NZ Visual Diary - entry 325

Landmark House - facade detail

Even the casual observer of my Substack blog NZ Visual Diary would notice my interest in — and some would say obsession with — Art Deco style architecture.

My final project for an art studio photography class celebrated that aesthetic passion. An excerpt from the artistic statement that accompanied my photographic portfolio submission traces my origins story regarding that love affair with the Art Deco style:

My father worked for more than thirty years in the Chanin Building, a handsome example of architecture in the Art Deco style. From the front door of his New York City office dwelling, I could see the Chrysler Building, a glorious gift of Art Deco splendour. With my first visit to Radio City Musical hall, another towering tribute to the Art Deco style, I realised that I was hopelessly smitten. Art Deco is for me visual music.

I have always loved geometries, especially the dizzying patterns of fractals. My design sense gravitates to the seductiveness of a curve, the solidity of a triangle and the power of a diagonal. With its emphasis on stylised geometric forms and complex symmetries, Art Deco captivates me. Furthermore, I revel in its celebration of bold colour. It is an art form that holds in a fierce tension refinement and audacity.

As an architectural photographer, I have sought out buildings that express my love for the beauty of colour, the elegance of line or the rhythmic patterns of complex geometries.

Years later and one large pond away from New York City, I seek out in New Zealand exemplars of my favoured architectural style. Landmark House on Queen Street in Auckland is but one example of an Art Deco signature to which I return often.

Monumental public buildings, along with city centre commercial architecture, are expressions of civic pride. If great cathedrals are testaments to communal religious faith and devotional rapture, then by analogy significant public and commercial architecture express secular adoration for the civic and commercial firmament of cities.

As the Landmark House entry in the online encyclopaedia for Heritage New Zealand observes:

The headquarters was a self-consciously modern building, described as a 'miniature skyscraper' when built, and was one of the tallest structures in Auckland. It was the first building in the city to be floodlit and was proclaimed to have the fastest lift in the country. It was also a celebration of communal pride, with New Zealand motifs being used and local firms - including the architects, Wade and Bartley - preferred in its construction.¹

1. Landmark House - Heritage New Zealand
< https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/4470/Listing >