Journal of Design History Vol. 16 No. 4 © 2003 The Design History Society. All rights reserved Iconographies of 'The House' and the Political Imagination in 1940s New Zealand Chris Brickell 77ii5 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 sclieme, 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. Keywords: architecture—consumption—modernism—New Zealand—Plischke, Ernst—the Introduction: 'The house' post-war There are people who dislike the idea of display, who think that a house should be something more than a shel- ter or a snuggery or a machine. They realise that a house is a framework in which our lives are lived, and that does not entirely consist of working, eating and sleeping. They want a richer and fuller life, and diey know that the house they live in can play an active part in attaining it . . . a house is to a certain degree a mirror of the mind. This proposition was offered to New Zealanders in 1947 by Ernst Plischke, an Austrian modernist archi- tect who immigrated in 1939. His words are con- tained within an educative booklet on design, housing and town planning written for New Zeal- anders and published in 1947 at the direction of Peter Fraser, then Labour Prime Minister. When set in the context of its production, Plischke's quote suggests a number of interesting considerations. The 'house' appears not merely as a dwelling place, a shelter, etc., but as a particular type of framework in which its inhabitants order their lives. This framework can enrich the experience of daily life by reflecting personality and facilitating self- actualization. Plischke's proposition, however, hints at more: the house and its design represent wider social and cultural shifts, events, understandings and mores. These have a broader purchase in society than fulfilment of the individual spirit, for they express aspects of the spirit of the age. To put it another way, 'the house', however it is understood at a given point in time, frames contemporary society and culture. This article takes PlischJce's notion of the house as a framework and considers it through a close reading of text and image in New Zealand during the 1940s. It takes as a given Forty's axiom that 'social context' is not merely incidental to design, but instead that design is so interwoven with society that 'the history of design is the history of societies'. My discussion focuses on the convergences between the state, 291