A series of 13 programmes which takes a look at some of the developments in New Zealand architecture and interior design.
The first item in the series will be in the early evening programme on Wednesday. Each week, an outstanding home somewhere, in New Zealand will be featured, together with a discussion of one particular element of interior decor. The series has been planned to demonstrate that, although it is all very well to leave it to the experts, an awareness of the available alternatives can open up new land exciting ways of improving the quality of our environment.
The host for this series is Kevin Mills, a Dunedin radio and television announcer. His own keen interest in interior! decorating and in the restoration of old houses is hardly surprising, since his family has been involved in building since the start of this century. Mr Mills is a keen collector of antiques, modern Scandinavian glassware and native artifacts and weapons of all kinds.
He says that he enjoys being surrounded by “eclectic disarray” and, although he has enough to fill another house, he cannot resist an antique bargain.
The resident design expert for the series is Tom Esplin, well-known in art circles as painter and critic. A senior lecturer in design with the faculty of Home Science at Otago University, Mr Esplin is no stranger to television. He has been a reporter on Dunedin’s “Town and Around” at various times during the last two years. Mr E. J. McCoy, a New Zealand Institute of Architects gold medallist, is the consultant for the series, and his expertise and knowledge of architectural trends both here and overseas has proved most valuable in compiling the series.
“Design in Living” is produced in the Dunedin studios of the N.Z.B.C. by lan Ralston, who has also written the scripts. It has been said that the designer has a unique role to fulfil in society as an interpreter of human needs. But there is a growing awareness that human needs are becoming subservient to an impersonal technology, whose influence increases day by day, and over which we can exercise little control.
Indeed, a speaker at a recent international conference on environmental design went so far as to say that the need today is not for more planners and designers, but for more civilised, intelligent and forceful clients. The series is designed to encourage them.
Press, 31 March 1970.
Comments powered by CComment