John Wallis Barnicoat (1814-1905) was born in England, and trained as an engineer. He arrived in Nelson in 1842 and worked as a surveyor for the New Zealand Company. Una Platts, Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists: A Guide and Handbook (Christchurch: Avon Press, 1980).
Marco Frascari, "Plans (3) Ichnography: The Topical Enigma of Architectural Plans," Terrazzo (Spring 1989) no. 2.
The plan, the ubiquitous architectural drawing, is, in New Zealand, considered to be essential in that it is instrumental to the act of building, the preferred condition of architecture. New Zealand architecture, it has been argued, comes from colonial traditions of self sufficiency and practicality, privileging working 'directly' with 'material.' Notions of direct experience in shaping a 'natural' land underpin much of the writing about colonial life. This paper, however, attempts to insist on reading the corporeal into the theoretical and the speculative.
Ernst Plishke is a Viennese architect, born 1903, who as a refugee from the second World War arrived in New Zealand in 1939. He worked initially as a draughtsman and later as an architect until 1962 when he returned to Europe. Linda Tyler, The Architecture of E. A. Plishke in New Zealand: 1939-1962 (MA thesis, University of Canterbury, 1986).
E. A. Plishke, Design and Living (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1947).
Ruth Allen quotes surveyor Curling Young in her history of Nelson's settlement, "'there never was such a place in that respect - at the top of the Mountains and along the side swamps without end.' The deep bogs and the raupo, bulrushes and giant flax growing therein made survey work in some areas a nightmare." Ruth M. Allen, Nelson a History of Early Settlement (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1965), p. 197.
E. A. Plishke Design and Living (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1947), p. 45.
A. Loos, "Ornament und Verbrechen," (1908) Bendetto Gravagnola Adolf Loos (New York: Rizzoli, 1982), p. 67.
E. A. Plishke Design and Living (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1947), p. 41.
Barnicoat during the construction of the 'Weimai' house wrote in his journal "we advanced rapidly with our house and look forward with pleasure to sitting under cover where we can light a candle" Journal (Wellington: Alexander Turnbull Library, 1841-44), p. 8.
John Wallis Barnicoat, Journal (Wellington: Alexander Turnbull Library, 1841-44), p. 34.
E. A. Plishke, Design and Living (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1947), p. 33.
"Drawing the line somewhere is an activity of last resort. ... Vigorously maintaining the space that remains, it is a line that attempts to fix a limit. These ruled lines are according to Sir Joseph Reynolds 'to be considered fences placed only where trespass is expected.' ... This seemingly paranoid prescription fails to realize that fences are also made for sitting." R. Durham Crout, "Red Lines," Implementing Architecture: Exposing the Paradigm Surrounding the Implements and the Implementation of Architecture (Atlanta: The Architecture Society & Nexus Press, 1988), unpaginated.
"This line marks a ... feeling that something is about to go too far. ... Here, the line exposes itself as 'trespassing' its own limit. It reveals that beneath its sharp edge is an ambiguous and blurred foundation. The act of drawing the line somewhere contains within it the very mechanisms of its own dismantling. In other words this line situates itself somewhere between sense and non-sense." R. Durham Crout, "Red Lines," unpaginated.
Barnicoat Journal, May 15 1843. Text on drawing, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington C21763.
E. A. Plishke, Design and Living (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1947), p. 17.
See his designs for Maori housing in Nelson 1843. Barnicoat Journal, p. 87.
Catherine Ingraham points out that; "architecture is a discipline that defines its boundaries and design capacities according to the workings of orthogonality (strictly defined, the right-angledness of the line) ... even in epistemological and representational accounts of its own artistic practice, architecture relies on a kind of orthogonality, a linear movement from drawing to building, architect to drawing." Catherine Ingraham, "Initial Proprieties: Architecture and the Space of the Line," Sexuality & Space ed. Beatriz Colomina (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), p. 264.