John Wilfred Manning is a New Zealand architect from Auckland. He is well known for a wide variety of designs including houses (particularly his own house at Stanley Bay, Cathcart House, and large commercial buildings. He is a fellow of the NZIA.
Projects
Manning's many projects include three which are particularly prominent.
Manning designed one of the first Ludwig Mies van der Rohe style skyscrapers built in New Zealand, the AMP Building on the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets, Auckland. Revolutionary features, for its time, include structure based on a concrete frame, sheathed with a curtain wallconsisting of aluminium frames clad with stainless steel, and glazed with units of heat-absorbing glass and green opaque spandrels. The ground floor columns are clad with black ebony granite.
The Majestic Centre, a large commercial complex is located close to, and visible from, Wellington's Civic Square. The Majestic Tower rises from Boulcott Street and is very prominent, especially at night when its horizontally spread fan of metal rods tipped with powerful light bulbs is illuminated. Its three-story podium, forming a street frontage to Willis Street, is split at midpoint by an open six-storied gallery linked to the base of the tower. The street frontage incorporates five distinct buildings: the Edwardianfaçade of Preston Meats; a newly inserted three-storeyed building of no particular quality; the massive central entry topped with a metal and glass canopy; and a flat granite surface glazed above, which finally slopes away to Dr Henry Pollen's House designed by William Turnbull whose style is exuberantly French Empire but built in wood. This great house is located on the corner site, moved down from further up Boulcott Street. On Willis St, granite colonnades, ended before Turnbull's house and leading to shops behind, providing pedestrian shelter along the frontage. The colonnades were subsequently built in.
The School of Music represents a departure from the Brutalist norm of that period, although in a completely different post-modernist style. The building won the NZIA supreme national award in 1986, and in 2013 received an enduring architecture award from the NZIA.
