Wellington's Massey House is pictured nearing completion in 1957. Designed by the Austrian émigré Ernst Plischke and local architect Cedric Firth, it was New Zealand's first glass curtain-wall office building. The building highlights the simple forms of the modernist style. The use of pilotis (thin pillars) and the sculptural rooftop machinery room references the work of the great modernist architect Le Corbusier. The view is unusual in showing the lightwell and windowed northern side of the building – now hidden by another office block. Firth later extended the building to the south.
Using this item
Alexander Turnbull Library, Evening Post Collection (PAColl-0614)
Reference:
EP/1957/3792-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.
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