The land, the weather and No. 8 wire
Practice in Profile
IN MY YOUTH, I WORKED ON FRIENDS’ and uncles’ farms in the Waikato, the King Country and Taranaki, where there was endless talk about the land and the weather. Mostly, it was talk of something felt: the prevailing wind defined by the lean of the vegetation, the difference between the windward and leeward sides of sheds, and noticing the way stock take shelter against the elements. I learned about keeping the sheep dry before shearing, watched rivers and creeks rising after rain and then their drying out over summer. There were questions: Should we bale the hay today? Rain is expected so shall we fertilise? I remember sensing the temperature shifts as we rode over to the other side of a ridge, or into a bush glade or those parts of a river where the sun had warmed the rocks.
There was also this notion that the buildings, sheds, fences, races and equipment could mostly be fixed, often by the No. 8 wire approach, by the farmers themselves. They say you can take the boy out of the country but not the country out of the boy.
When I did leave Te Awamutu in 1972 for the city and the Auckland School of Architecture in 1975, the learning was of Frank Lloyd Wright’s principles of materiality, of spatial compression and release,
