John Wilfred Manning (12 October 1928 – 8 October 2021) was a New Zealand architect from

Auckland Auckland ( ; ) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and ...

. He is well known for a wide variety of designs including houses (particularly his own house at Stanley Bay, Cathcart House ( Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) Supreme Award 2006), and large commercial buildings. He was a fellow of the NZIA and was the recipient of its highest honour, the

Gold Medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have b ...

, in 2011.

Early life

Manning was born on 12 October 1928. He grew up in Devonport and Takapuna, and was educated at St Peter's College, Auckland.

Projects

Manning's many projects include three which are particularly prominent.

AMP Building, Auckland

Manning designed one of the first

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...

style skyscrapers built in New Zealand, the AMP Building (1962 – Thorpe, Cutter, Pickmere & Douglas) on the corner of

Queen Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Q ...

and Victoria Streets, Auckland. Revolutionary features, for its time, include structure based on a concrete frame, sheathed with a curtain wall consisting of aluminium frames clad with stainless steel, and glazed with units of heat-absorbing glass and green opaque

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...

s. The ground floor columns are clad with black ebony granite.

Majestic Centre, Wellington

The Majestic Centre (1989–1991), a large commercial complex is located close to, and visible from,

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

's Civic Square. The Majestic Tower rises from Boulcott Street and is very prominent, especially at night when its horizontally spread fan of metal rods tipped with powerful light bulbs is illuminated. Its three-story podium, forming a street frontage to Willis Street, is split at midpoint by an open six-storied gallery linked to the base of the tower. The street frontage incorporates five distinct buildings: the

Edwardian In the United Kingdom, the Edwardian era was a period in the early 20th century that spanned the reign of King Edward VII from 1901 to 1910. It is commonly extended to the start of the First World War in 1914, during the early reign of King Ge ...

façade A façade or facade (; ) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loanword from the French language, French (), which means "frontage" or "face". In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important asp ...

of Preston Meats; a newly inserted three-storeyed building of no particular quality; the massive central entry topped with a metal and glass canopy; and a flat granite surface glazed above, which finally slopes away to Dr Henry Pollen's House designed by William Turnbull whose style is exuberantly French Empire but built in wood. This great house is located on the corner site, moved down from further up Boulcott Street. On Willis St, granite colonnades, ended before Turnbull's house and leading to shops behind, providing pedestrian shelter along the frontage. The colonnades were subsequently built in.

University of Auckland School of Music

The School of Music (1980) (designed with David Mitchell) represents a departure from the

Brutalist Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the b ...

norm of that period, although in a completely different post-modernist style. The building won the NZIA supreme national award in 1986, and in 2013 received an enduring architecture award from the NZIA.

Other projects

* Auckland Central Library * Auckland College of Education,

Epsom Epsom is a town in the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey, England, about south of central London. The town is first recorded as ''Ebesham'' in the 10th century and its name probably derives from that of a Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain ...

, Auckland *Cathcart House *Manning House

Later life

Manning died on 8 October 2021, aged 92 years.

Notes

References

*Julia Gatley (ed), Long Live the Modern: New Zealand’s New Architecture 1904–1984, Auckland University Press, Auckland. *Erroll J Haarhoff, Guide to the Architecture of Central Auckland, Balasoglou Books, 2006. *Peter Shaw, A History of New Zealand Architecture, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland, 2003.

External links

New Zealand Institute of Architects 2011 Gold Medal: Jack Manning
(retrieved 16 February 2017) {{DEFAULTSORT:Manning, Jack 1928 births 2021 deaths New Zealand architects University of Auckland alumni Architects from Auckland People educated at St Peter's College, Auckland University of New Zealand alumni Fellows of the New Zealand Institute of Architects Recipients of the NZIA Gold Medal