‘Back to the south’: Cyril Knight and the modernisation of the Auckland School of Architecture

Abstract

The School of Architecture at Auckland University College (now the University of Auckland) modernised in the 1950s and early 1960s. This in itself is not unusual. But the process was atypical in that it was led by a long-serving Chair and Dean rather than a newly appointed one, and indeed a person not known as a modernist. Cyril Roy Knight (1893–1972) was an Australian who graduated from the University of Liverpool in 1923 and served as New Zealand’s first Chair and Dean of Architecture from 1925 to 1958. This article explores Knight’s attitude to modernism, and the modernisation of the Auckland School. It shows that he was conscious of New Zealand’s geographic isolation and worked hard to understand international developments in architectural education before instituting change at the Auckland School. His approach was one of considered gradualism. It included the appointment of multiple new staff members in the postwar period. This had unintended but important effects for the School and for the direction of New Zealand architecture.