John Chaplin Design Ltd Homes - 70's

These images are a range of projects by the earlier practice of John Chaplin Design Ltd. This was still the era of weatherboards and brick veneer, and the beginning of the pole house as a means of building on difficult hill sites. The 1st photo is of the Chaplin home, taken on completion in 1977 and the 6th photos is of the house taken in 1981. Click here to view the 1970’s gallery images

John Chaplin Design Ltd Homes - 80's

This era the practice was involved in a numerous pole home designs, with weatherboards still the common cladding material. Towards the end of the 80’s saw the first of the synthetic plaster clad homes. Click here to view the 1980’s gallery images

John Chaplin Design Ltd Homes - 90's

The 1990’s saw the growth in popularity of the monolithic plaster homes and the practice became caught up in the demand for this form of construction. The new Christchurch City Plan introduced stricter planning demands which forced the lowering of roof lines and pole homes which sat mostly up out of the ground became more difficult to design within the new height limits, meaning new homes needed to be more dug into the hillside. Click here to view the 1990’s gallery images

John Chaplin Design Ltd Homes - 00's

House design started to become more sophisticated, with a lot of competition to for more contemporary and radical designs. New materials and building systems were introduced and the technical aspect of designing and building began to become more critical. In 2003 John joined with Stephen Crooks to form the new practice of Chaplin Crooks Architects Ltd. Click here to view the 2000’s gallery images

John Chaplin Design Ltd Homes - Computer Images

These images show the development of computer software to produce almost photo realistic images, from the very early 90’s up to the early 2000’s, using AutoCad and a rendering package of Accurender. The first image of a home in Hillsborough was the first computer model prepared by John Chaplin Design in 1990. Following that are various projects designed by the firm, which later became John Chaplin Architects Ltd. in 1996. Further development using ArchiCad software which was adopted as the CAD package of choice by the new practice of Chaplin Crooks Architects, is shown in the main section of this site here