Smith’s Dream
The late Maurice K Smith spent most of his career practising and teaching architecture in the United States, but also left a vivid impression in the country of his birth
By Lucy Treep
In late 2020, New Zealand-born professor Maurice K Smith died in Harvard, Massachusetts. He was 94. He was warmly remembered in print by those who’d known him in the United States, including by his university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In New Zealand, several architectural magazines published an obituary written by Sir Bob Harvey, who is proud to live in an Auckland house designed by Smith, and happy to recall the times he met him. Sir Bob wrote that he was filled with sadness “for this remarkable architect” who, despite a rich life of teaching and architecture in the USA, was “hardly known in his birth country of New Zealand”. It’s true that these days he isn’t well-known here, but for many of those who did know of him, he was a legendary figure.
Smith lived for more than 60 years teaching and practising architecture in the States, and only occasionally returned to New Zealand. He certainly isn’t a household name locally, but somehow stories of him remain in circulation and his ideas are still considered of note. Smith remains a vivid, if elusive, presence in local architectural minds. Why is this? Partly, it’s because he was a talented architect, artist and teacher, but also he’s become associated with the challenging of conventions and some fun, if outrageous, behaviour.
Maurice Smith showed early on that he was a dynamo of talent bolstered by self-belief. He graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Auckland in 1950, and in the following year, at least five houses and a fire station were built to his design, some in partnership with ‘Mick’ (Clayton George) Cutter, one of his university lecturers (and later of Cutter Thorpe Pickmere & Douglas). By 1951, he’d applied for and won a Fulbright Scholarship for postgraduate study in the United States. This was pretty early in the history of the Fulbright, and at a time when most graduates were simply grateful to have a degree and hopefully a job.
Smith remains a vivid, if elusive, presence in local architectural minds. Why is this? Partly, it’s because he was a talented architect, artist and teacher, but also he’s become associated with the challenging of conventions and some fun, if outrageous, behaviour.
In the States, he again stood out from his peer group. Wellington academic Michael Dudding interviewed Smith about his years as a student at MIT. You can read about this in Dudding’s wonderful oral-history study New Zealand Architects Abroad. Smith recalled a panel review of a selection of work from the first student project of the year. Smith’s work wasn’t amongst that pinned up for review. As the session was finishing, students whose work hadn’t been addressed were asked if they’d like to say anything. Yes, Smith would. He pointed out “where the reviewers had got it wrong, both in terms of their judgements of the projects on display, and in the deficient manner in which the problem was set”. He then pinned up his own work and pointed out its superior qualities. One of the staff, Serge Chermeyeff, couldn’t hold back his laughter. Smith was invited to lunch and then to spend the summer with the Chermeyeffs at their holiday home in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, working on a small architectural project for Chermeyeff. Gyōrgy Kepes, a key figure of the New Bauhaus in Chicago, who was teaching at MIT, had already befriended Smith and also invited him to Wellfleet for the summer. Smith seems to have spent his time wandering between summer houses and free-flowing architectural discussions with highly influential figures in the architectural thinking of the time. Smith met another notable figure, architect Buckminster Fuller, at MIT and spent the second part of his summer helping to construct one of Fuller’s first commissioned geodesic domes. Later, in 1955/56, Smith was instrumental in introducing the geodesic dome to Auckland, when he worked with local architect Ivan Tarulevicz to construct a 28 metre-high dome at Western Springs for the Auckland Festival.Over 25,000 people paid tickets to enter, and as festival publicity notes, quite a few people were more interested in the building than the displays within.