R. Keith Land papers

Keith Land attended Mount Albert Grammar School before completing his architectural diploma at Auckland University College in the late 1920s and early 1930s. His timed six-hour sketch of a country residence, completed in his fourth-year of study, featured in the 1932 Auckland University College School of Architecture prospectus.1 In 1937 two of Land’s early designs, a three-bedroom family home in St. Heliers and a new electrical showroom and shop-front on Karangahape Road, were published in Building Today and Home & Building Today.2 In the late 1930s Land started working for Surrey Alleman. Land was also employed by the Works Department during the Second World War to assist with urgent defence building. In October 1944 he successfully appealed to the Auckland Manpower (Industrial) Committee to be released from his contract so that he could go into partnership with Alleman.3 After the war he was a partner with Alleman, Land, & Verrall, and in the 1960s Alleman, Land & Heaney & Partners. The practices Land was associated with designed numerous family residences and small commercial and public buildings in the upper North Island. Land was a regular contributor to Home & Building in the 1940s and was honorary district secretary of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, as well as vice-president of the Mt. Albert Old Boys’ Association.4

References:

1. Auckland University College School of Architecture. (1932). Prospectus, p.15.

2. What to do before the architect comes.(1937). Building Today, Vol. 1, no. 3 (April-June), p. 23.

Two interesting examples of modern shop architecture. (1937). Home & Building Today, Vol. 1, no. 4 (July-Sept.), p. 15.

3. Release opposed: architects’ position. (1944, October 18). New Zealand Herald. Retrieved from https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19441018.2.64?query=Alleman+%26+Land&snippet=true

4. Sheppard, F. (n.d.), Richard Keith Land. [clippings file] Fergus Sheppard New Zealand architects and buildings collection (the Sheppard Collection), MSS-Archives-Arch-2017/1, file L253. Special Collections, The University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services, Auckland, N.Z.