Iconographies of 'The House' and the Political Imagination in 1940s New Zealand

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which various images of ‘the house’ were constructed with the support of the state in New Zealand in the late 1940s. The context for these constructions was a large-scale public housing scheme, the influence of international modernism, questions about the role of the architect in public cultural education, and increasing demands for housing and consumer goods following the end of the war. It is argued that these factors were condensed into particular images of the house, and such images were integral to construction of differences between the Labour Party government and the parliamentary opposition National Party. Through an examination of housing imagery and political difference it is possible to consider how house design can be understood symbolically, as integral to political debate as well as wider imaginings of social context and social change.