ABSTRACT
Smyth’s emphasis in the 1970s and 1980s on modernist space and form contrasted (at first glance) with the search for cultural identity widespread in garden discourse at that time. It might seem, then, that his work in the public arena, which developed rapidly in the 1990s, differed radically from his gardens in its sudden engagement with the problematics of place. We hope in this chapter to show that Smyth’s approach to civic place-making is a development of a modernist commitment to essentialism. While his apparent movement from explorations of space to those of place may partially be attributed to the briefs he received from urban authorities, which required the incorporation of ‘sense of place philosophies and principles’ into the planning and design of public territories (in 2001 Auckland City Council developed a pamphlet that advised designers on how to do this1), he was already faced with how to continue his abstract design modalities into what he perceived as a new era. But this does not fully explain the translation of his aesthetic programme from gardens to public space. Concerned to continue his development as an artist and designer, he immediately saw, on receiving his first big public commission, that here was the solution to the problem. ‘Quay Park has been the opportunity of a lifetime,’ he said on completion of that project, adding, as so often, ‘I try to avoid imitating myself.’2 The refocusing was not a revolution in his design thinking. Instead, Smyth significantly extended and evolved his approach to design in response to the new challenges of the public realm. How he achieved this demonstrates his capacity for continuing development. First, and most important, he explored the new regionalist requirements for the physical civic realm through the incorporation of cultural signifiers into landscape design – something he had not been interested in before. His public space projects engage significantly with
localist languages of design derived from Māori imagery, extending and reformulating the modernist basis of his vocabulary. He became interested in the relationship between indigeneity and design. Second, he responded to the (for him) new scales of landscape-making that civic programming required by reformatting his spatial and formal vocabulary. While he still arranged horizontal and vertical planes, and used plants to complexify form and space, in the larger-scale public work Smyth was able to explore the application of indigenous plants, for the first time, to expansive geometrical formats – nīkau palms in lines and grids, for instance, climax rainforest trees in long, curving arcs. Third, he developed an interest in topography and the potentials of landform manipulation to create new spatial effects that reflect the contours of the wider New Zealand landscape, and literally – at last – sculpt terrain. This chapter shows how Smyth’s public commissions, beginning with an important park for a Māori constituency, catalysed a major change in his thinking about the connections between modernism and regionalism. While it explores the liberation of his spatial language from the small scale of the garden, and the role of topography – terrain as a plastic, sculptural medium – in his construction of cultural landscapes, the chapter focuses on the increasing spatialization of Māori decorative forms in his designs.
