Whare into the future

A rediscovered box of papers has thrown light on the work of émigré Gerhard Rosenberg, an advocate of culturally appropriate housing who was decades ahead of his time.

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Like any office or institution, the University of Auckland's faculty buildings have store rooms requiring a periodic sort-siftclean out. One recent tidy-up in the School of Architecture and Planning fortuitously unearthed a box of papers that the facilities manager doing the sifting thought to pass on to architecture professor Deidre Brown.

“They sat on my desk for a while before I looked at them, I’m ashamed to say,” says Brown.

When the Māori architectural historian finally opened the file box, she discovered taonga: about 100 pages of notes and plans advocating solutions to Māori housing needs from the late 1950s to the 70s, the work of former university staff member Gerhard Rosenberg.

“He was astonishingly ahead of his time as an architect co-designing plans for housing with Māori communities,” says Brown, who is a director of MAPIHI – Māori and Pacific Housing Research Centre – at the university.

“I'm so intrigued that someone was thinking about the cultural needs of Māori when it comes to housing 70 years ago in such a similar way to what we're thinking now.”

The box contained Māori-inspired designs Rosenberg and architect Don McCrae drew up for a 1960s government scheme to provide housing to meet Māori needs. A letter from the Department of Māori Affairs informed Rosenberg that one of his house designs had been accepted.

This would have allowed whānau to apply for a low-interest loan for a home in that style.

The department also said it would build a house designed by Rosenberg and McRae as a pilot project.

Another letter to Rosenberg, from Māori traditional literature expert Margaret Orbell, told him one of his houses had been built in Auckland: “There was some buyer resistance, doubtless because ... it seemed to them a bit like a whare,” Orbell wrote.