Ballinger, Stan, Andersons Bay, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1960
237. Ballinger, Stan /// Morgan House /// Andersons Bay, Dunedin,
New Zealand /// 1960 OfHouses guest
curated by Matheson Whiteley: “A strange and singular project, Stan Ballinger’s Morgan
House is a simple double-storey pavilion open to the North. It departs from its
Auckland antecedents, replacing crafted timber rationalism with a relentless
exploration of aluminium as surface, lining and cladding. The Morgan House is a
kind of built ‘image’, a bespoke project that apes the aesthetics of prefabrication
and transposes a benign and open vision of modernism onto an exposed site in
the last city before Antarctica. Almost devoid of internal walls (a system of concertina
fabric partitions provides a measure of enclosure), the Morgan House rejects
every form of comfort. But in doing so it opens a way forward for subsequent
generations to approach architecture outside the immediate demands of
pragmatics and common-sense.” (Text: Jason
Whiteley. Photos: © open2view.com.)
