Rules of the NZ Institute of Architects, 1905-1906. S.H. Seager and J.J. Collins were both council members.
Men of Integrity
20 November 2023
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Rules of the NZ Institute of Architects, 1905-1906. S.H. Seager and J.J. Collins were both council members.
The profession of architecture was somewhat distrusted in colonial New Zealand, given that there was initially no strict definition of who could call themselves an architect. Failures of some early buildings only served to increase doubt in the minds of the public.
Yet the architects whose work forms the nucleus of the Armson Collins Collection were committed to the highest professional standards, and took their roles in the process of creating buildings extremely seriously. Samuel Hurst Seager summed up this attitude when he wrote “Our architect of today must first and foremost be a man of perfect integrity and unimpeachable honour; generous-minded and strictly just in all his dealings…"
Worldwide, the slow improvement of the standards and practice of architecture during the 19th Century was reflected in the formation of architectural courses of study, specialist journals and magazines, and professional associations. Likewise trained architects in practice in New Zealand began to look for ways to enhance the status of their vocation.
In 1871, four architects formed the Canterbury Association of Architects. This was the first professional architectural organization in New Zealand, and it included two of the architects who would be instrumental in the College’s first buildings, Benjamin Mountfort and William Armson. The Association showed that they took professional standards seriously, as their rules made it clear that membership would be open only to architects who had been in practice for more than three years, and who had trained for at least four years as an articled pupil. The Canterbury Association lapsed in the 1880s, but was replaced in 1905 by the New Zealand Institute of Architects. Not surprisingly, several more of the College’s architects were members, including John James Collins, Samuel Hurst Seager, John Goddard Collins, and Richard Harman.
NZ Home and Building Magazine, August 1953, from the Armson Collins Collection.
