Exhibitions » Exhibition Archive » Hirschfeld Gallery Archive » Architect Bill Toomath: Liberating Everyday Life
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Toomath Senior House (1949), Lower Hutt, living room interior view. Image by Bill Toomath.
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Toomath Senior House (1949), Lower Hutt, driveway approach. Image by Ron Redfern, courtesy Gordon H Burt Ltd.
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Architect Bill Toomath: Liberating Everyday Life, installation view, 2010. Photo: Andrew Beck.
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Architect Bill Toomath: Liberating Everyday Life, 2010. Photo: Andrew Beck.
Architect Bill Toomath: Liberating Everyday Life
29 January - 14 March 2010 in the Hirschfeld Gallery
In a 1983 lecture for the New Zealand Institute of Architects conference, Bill Toomath listed his ‘strongest beliefs’ in architecture: a rational design basis; economy of means; clarity of form, technique and structure. All were to be regulated by discipline, a discipline shaped in response to local climate and materials. New Zealanders’ ordinary daily activities were foremost in his mind: the spaces he designed were to enable practical, enjoyable, livable everyday surroundings.
These principles have remained constant throughout forty years of practice. At their core, and underpinning this exhibition, is the idea of open planning. Resolved to make modern architecture a habitable reality for New Zealanders, Toomath opened the tightly compartmentalised houses of the pre-1950s, creating continuous spaces which catered for a more informal style of living. Advances in industrial design, materials and technologies made possible the design of buildings in which innovation and economy are equally important.
This exhibition looked at a modest number of projects within Toomath’s considerable output. Toomath Senior House, which he designed for his parents in 1948, is an early example of open planning. This exhibition layout reflected that of his parent’s living room, and was divided according to the same logic and dimensions. On the gallery’s right hand wall the windows and room divisions of the house were ghosted in tape; it is as if you hadentered the original blueprint. (The Toomath Senior House site plan also featured in the exhibition.)
Toomath’s practice spans the entire period of New Zealand modernism, and is distinct in its consistency of approach. Simplicity of form and means remain primary themes. Their development may be traced from his 1949 thesis design for a waterfront-sited National Art Museum, to his most recent work, a study built onto his Roseneath house precisely replicating a 15th century painting by Antonello da Messina, St Jerome in his Study. More than any previous one, this project reveals his extraordinary ability to adapt means to ends, to respond to unique needs by creating uniquely livable spaces.