Brown vs. Brown

Director Simon Mark-Brown mixed family and architectural history in his feature-length film about architecture, and its lasting imprint. For Brown Vs. Brown he studied the legacy of his father Peter Mark-Brown, a modernist architect whose 'internationalist' vision is evident in Aotearoa today. In this trailer, historian Douglas Lloyd Jenkins wishes more recognition be paid to the Mark Brown/Fairhead style as a key Kiwi tastemaker, and experts discuss the styles of internationalism and regionalism in a New Zealand context.

There was one architecture school in the 50s in Auckland, run by a guy called Vernon Brown, an English architect, and he was a regionalist, who was looking for our new vernacular for New Zealand modernism; woody and modest and sort of inward-looking, he thought New Zealand had its own identity with the wool shed and the whare. Other students there, like my father, and a bunch of others, were internationalists looking outward to the world where they wanted any inspiration, wherever the best inspiration was, Japan and Europe and mainly California, the sort of home of mid-century modern.

– Director Simon Mark-Brown on his father and stylistic clashes in 1950s Kiwi architecture, Radio New Zealand, 1 May 2023

Key Cast & Crew

Simon Mark-Brown

Director, Writer, Producer, Editor, Cinematographer, Subject

Jasper Johnstone

Second Camera Operator

Mike Bloemendal

Sound Mix

Bertrand Remaut

Editor

Douglas Lloyd Jenkins

Subject