Henry Kulka 1900-1971 (Architects of Remuera) a forerunner of New Zealand modern architecture

Henry Kulka (1900–71) is often cited as a forerunner of New Zealand modern architecture. Alongside Ernst Plischke, Kulka is the most significant emigree architect ever to work in this country. However, outside of a few surviving houses, most notably the Halberstam House, Karori, Wellington, 1948, his actual work remains little published in this country and the state of his legacy today is fragile.

Kulka was born Jindřich in 1900, in Moravia, eastern Czechia. He later changed his name to the more Germanic-sounding Heinrich. Later again, upon arrival in New Zealand, he would change it to the anglicised Henry.

Henry Kulka studied under, worked alongside and is most strongly associated with Czech architect Adolf Loos (1870–1933). Loos was one of the key polemicists of modern architecture and author of the foundational text, Ornament and Crime, published 1913. Loos was also architect of, amongst many other works, the American Bar, 1908, Vienna, the hugely controversial Goldman and Salatsch Building, Michaelerplatz, Vienna, 1910–12 (now the Raiffeisenbank), and late in life, Villa Müller, Prague (1928), now recognised as one of the key private houses of modern architecture.

From his death in 1933, until the late 1970s, Loos was largely a neglected figure. Today, by contrast, his is work is subject to an insatiable and growing library of books, international conferences and articles, both scholarly and popular. There are numerous, ongoing efforts to restore his surviving works in Brno, Pilsen, Prague and Vienna, and elsewhere in Austria and Czechia. Over the past decade, a number of his surviving buildings have become major architectural tourist attractions.

In 1919, Kulka became a student of Adolf Loos’s Bauschule, Loos’s self-initiated alternative to Vienna’s architecture school system. From 1920 until 1923, Kulka was a student trainee in Loos’s office, working on the Heuberg Siedlung (housing estate), Vienna.

In 1921, Kulka aided Loos in the editing and compilation of Loos’s writings, later translated into English as Spoken into the Void.[1] Kulka worked on the Chicago Tribune Tower international architectural competition, 1922, a colossal Doric column which the jury did not award a prize to, but which has gone on to become one of the most iconic images of modernism. It was focus of extended treatment in Post Modern Architecture, 1977 by English architectural critic Charles Jencks. He viewed Loos’s tower as a forerunner to postmodernism, with its interest in symbolism and classicism and even, as Jencks saw it, irony and wit.

In 1922 Kulka worked under Loos on the Villa Rufer in Hietzing, Vienna. This is often considered Loos’s breakthrough project in terms of organising spaces according to Raumplan principles; that is, a three-dimensional assembly of volumes, with rooms of differing heights depending on their importance and intended atmosphere, locked together within the one simple outer cube.

In 1924, when Loos moved to Paris, Kulka continued as his technical manager in Vienna. Kulka’s wife Hilde (later Hilda) Beran became the practice manager for Loos’s office and later Kulka’s as well.  In 1927 Kulka moved to Paris to join Loos. Here he supervised the alterations to Loos’s Kniže menswear store on the Champs-Élysées (demolished) and assisted on the unrealised house for world-famous dancer Josephine Baker.

In 1928 Kulka and Loos returned to Vienna. Kulka assisted Loos’s employee Jacques Groag (architect husband of textile designer Jacqueline Groag) on Loos’s key late work, Villa Moller, Vienna. Kulka wrote the first monograph on Loos, published in 1931 under Loos’s direction, Adolf Loos: Das werk des architecten, published by Anton Schroll Verlag.[2] Loos and Kulka commissioned photographer Martin Gerlach Jnr to revisit and document Loos’s entire oeuvre. Kulka is credited with the first use of the term Raumplan, though it was not one which Loos himself ever used. Later, in 1957, by which time Loos was an almost forgotten figure, Kulka wrote a lengthy and detailed article on Loos in the British publication, Architect’s Year Book.[3]

Kulka’s writing on Loos was almost unique, until joined by Münz and Kunstler’s book of 1964, reproduced in English in 1966, with an introduction by architectural historian Nicholas Pevsner.[3] Kulka was thus not only a promotor of Loos, but also one of his first interpreters as well as his key disciple.

By the 1930’s, Kulka had assumed a senior position in Loos’s office, considered by many critics to be almost Loos’s co-worker, rather than employee. Kulka was co-architect with Loos Albert Matzner shop along Kohlmessergasse, Vienna, 1930 (demolished), on Landhaus Khuner, Payerbach (1930), a holiday house which today operates as a family-run hotel, about one hour south of Vienna by train, and on the Werkbundsiedlung houses, Hietzing, Vienna, 1932–33, which also still exist. Together Loos and Kulka ran the studio until 1932 when Loos could no longer continue in practice due to ill health.

As well as being highly regarded by Loos professionally, Kulka and Loos were close personally. Kulka was best man at Adolf Loos’s wedding in 1929 to Claire Beck, Loos’s third wife. Claire wrote an account of her marriage to Loos after his death, to help raise money for his permanent tombstone, later translated into English as the work The Private Adolf Loos: A Private Portrait.[4] She died at the hands of the Nazis in 1942.

A large number of Loos’s clients and key workers were Jewish. Many died in the Holocaust or had their houses possessed first by the Nazis and later the communists and so were both displaced and dispossessed, if they were fortunate enough to survive at all. It is a miracle so many of Loos’s works still exist today.

After Loos’s death in 1933, Kulka continued to practise, with an office in Vienna and a second one in Hradec Králové, Czechia.  Under his own name he completed a number of works including buildings in Vienna (Villa Weissmann, 1934), Jablonec nad Nisou (Villa Kantor, 1932–34), Prague (Kniže menswear store, 1934), Vienna (the stunning Parker Pen shop,1935), Hradec Králové (the Löwenbach apartment building, 1938) and Hronov (Villa Holzner, 1938).

Imagine being at the centre of European cultural life, giving it all up However, as a Jewish architect, following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, Kulka was forced give up the life, contacts, and the reputation he had built up over the preceding decades and escape the coming wave of systematic murder. First, the family (including young children Richard and Maru) fled to England then, with letters of introduction from composer Arnold Schönberg and diplomat Jan Masaryk among other major cultural figures, they travelled to New Zealand in March, 1940.

Here Kulka built a number of fine timber houses during the 1940s and again towards the end of his career, in the 1960s. Many of these works were designed for fellow Jewish emigres who recognised his talents and shared his cultural heritage. From 1940 until 1960, Henry Kulka worked at Fletcher Construction, New Zealand’s major building company, as an architect, rising to the position of their Chief Architect. He not only designed buildings across the country for Fletchers, but he also designed several significant houses and wide-ranging alterations for the Fletcher family. By some accounts, Kulka designed around forty private houses in New Zealand and over a hundred commercial and industrial buildings, including head office buildings, factories and also churches.

At one time, Kulka’s buildings could be found as far north as Whangarei, in the Auckland suburbs of Remuera, Epsom, St Heliers, Glendowie, Howick and Manurewa; in the Waikato, Kawerau, Wellington, Christchurch, as far south as Dunedin and as far north as Apia, Samoa. Henry Kulka died in 1971 and is buried in West Auckland, in the Hebrew area of Waikumete Cemetery. His wife Hilda is also buried at Waikumete, in the newer liberal Jewish area. His descendants live in New Zealand and Israel.

Today, almost all of this industrial heritage has disappeared. Sadly too, very little of his New Zealand private housing survives in anywhere near original condition. Kulka was rarely published in New Zealand in his own lifetime, which is hard to square with someone who so successfully used the media to promote Loos. His archive is of international significance to the study of Loos. It is also, of course, vital for advancing understanding of his own work, as arguably Loos’s most talented colleague. However, it remains private. Since his death, and lacking the publicity he deserved, the greater part of Kulka’s private housing has been demolished or been altered beyond recognition. Regularly his houses have sold without any awareness of who the original architect was, let alone his world-class pedigree. This process of destruction has continued right up until the present day, with several works being lost even in the past year alone.

In Europe, by contrast, the situation is finally improving. Considerable state-funded efforts have gone into the lengthy restoration of one of Kulka’s key works, the fabulous interior of Apartment Semler, Pilsen, 1932–34. It reopened to the public late 2022 after restoration works which began over a decade ago. This work, it is assumed, originated in a concept sketch by Loos. However, its design was developed when Loos was gravely ill, and it was only built after Loos’s death. It is now understood as a joint work and promoted by the city of Pilsen as a Loos / Kulka building. This work looks set to begin the proper re-evaluation of Kulka’s individual talents in Europe. Almost inevitably, it will lead to international Loos scholars making renewed efforts to seek out his work in New Zealand.

Henry Kulka is a key bridge between New Zealand and the vital heart of early European modernism. Imagine being at the centre of European cultural life, giving it all up to escape almost certain death, starting again with a young family in New Zealand in the 1940s, and working in near anonymity for the next thirty years, and through all those years, continuing to create remarkable work. That is the story of Henry Kulka.

His few remaining buildings in New Zealand show him responding creatively to the new land he encountered, at the very beginning of its own awakening to modernism. They also show Kulka’s extraordinary sense of craft and refined spatial sensibilities, despite the new material challenges he faced. New Zealand, by something of an accident of history, became a key custodian of Adolf Loos’s legacy. There is still time, but only just, to secure what remains for future generations, and to awaken public appreciation of this fascinating, highly cultured and immensely talented architect.

Henry Kulka, book, available to buy directly from www.marygaudin.com

‘With images by Mary Gaudin, a New Zealand photographer living in France, and words by Giles Reid, a New Zealand architect living in England, Henry Kulka builds up a vivid picture of a methodical and rigorous architect who nonetheless imbued his work with warmth and richness. Kulka died in 1971 and, remarkably, Gaudin and Reid’s 400-page monograph is the first book to be devoted to his work.’ Jonathan Bell, Wallpaper, 16 November 2022.

Copyright Giles Reid 28.03.23