Modern Architecture and the Pioneers: Paul Pascoe and the New Zealand House, 1933–1950

The publication of the Group Manifesto, “On the Necessity of Architecture,” in 1948 is widely regarded as a defining moment in New Zealand architectural history. The Group’s ideal of a modern architecture shaped by the environment of their own country was, however, anticipated in the pre-war writings and subsequent buildings of the Christchurch architect, Paul Pascoe (1908–1976). Although unacknowledged by the younger generation of modernists, Pascoe highlighted unexpected parallels between colonial primitivism and modernist functionalism and helped to shape the intellectual climate in which architectural modernism developed in New Zealand during the post-war period.