Architect Ron Pynenburg: New Zealand Hut Hero
by Sam Demas
[black and white photos below excerpted are from Pynenburg’s thesis, included here with permission]
Hut design reflects cultural values and recreational preferences, and can become an expression of national identity. This is certainly true in New Zealand, where Kiwi’s have definite opinions about and resonances with hut architecture. Most love the older, smaller huts with open hearths. Some hard core trampers are disdainful of the newer “flash” (fancy) huts. As I explored NZ huts, I couldn’t help wondering: Who designs these new huts? What design principles and preferences inform these designs? Where is the hut system headed? And, as Andrew Buglass suggests, is there a two-tier hut system evolving in which lower-use backcountry huts are losing support in favor of high-use serviced and Great Walks huts?
Ron in Dingleburn, Courtesy Pynenburg
In addition to talking with Brian Dobbie of DoC, I had a chance to meet Ron Pynenburg, the architect of many recent New Zealand huts. For me, learning a bit about Ron’s early influences and about his perspectives on hut design, past, present and future — the topic of this profile — cast light on these questions.
European huts (OK, I know one really shouldn’t generalize across so many distinctive nations!) are mostly very “flash”, i.e. more like mountain hotels than primitive shelters. For a Swiss architect, I’m told, a commission to design a hut is as prestigious as one to design and museum or a church. The multidisciplinary high-tech project selected to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , the design and construction of the New Monte Rosa Hut, is a remarkable monument to the place of huts (and Swiss hospitality, design and engineering) in that nation’s identity.
As an American, I was amazed to realize that every one of the 105 huts in the 18 U.S. hut systems has a higher level of amenities than every one of the 962 DoC huts, including those on the Great Walks. Like the Europeans, but in our own “pioneer” ways, we Americans sure like our comforts!