In blurring thresholds, opening up spaces, incorporating nature and increasing natural light and connectivity, his modernist ethos was the antithesis of the typical New Zealand domestic setting of the time. In 2010, Fritz was named an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to architecture.

“Fritz Eisenhofer was remarkable for the length of his career, the number and range of his works and, more importantly, for his ability to change, reinvent and continuously progress his design practice,” says Dr Tanja Poppelreuter, Associate Professor Architectural Humanities at the University of Salford, England, and author of ‘Changing places: New Zealand Houses by Winkler & Eisenhofer 1958 to 1969’, which was published in The Journal of Architecture in 2013.

Fritz was born in 1926 and trained as an engineer before studying architecture at the Kunstakademie in Vienna. In 1953, in the latter half of his twenties, he travelled to Aotearoa with a group of 194 Austrian tradesmen. In the midst of a labour and housing shortage here, the group was contracted to build 500 state homes in Titahi Bay, Porirua, from pre-cut larch imported from their home country. Following the project’s completion, some of the group decided to stay – Fritz was one of them. He gained residency and took a job with the Department of Housing in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, where he noted the forward-thinking designs of government architects.
In 1958, Fritz and fellow Austrian architect Erwin Winkler established a practice, with their studio at 108 Cuba Street, Te Whanganui-a-Tara. The first private home they designed was in Takapu Road, Tawa, and many others followed that expressed individuality and an international modernist style. Winkler & Eisenhofer was active until 1969 and notable examples of their work can be found in Karori, Lower Hutt and Khandallah, including the multi-level house on Rama Crescent with a swimming pool and courtyard that Fritz designed for his family.

The designs were reminiscent of the glamorous modern aesthetic seen in the Case Study houses built in California between 1944 and 1966, says Tanja. “Their commissions were so numerous and so uncompromisingly modern that Winkler & Eisenhofer belonged with the main contributors and developers of mid-century modern architecture in New Zealand.”

There were other commissions, including designs for Chez Lilly restaurant, the showroom for Viking Records and, in 1964, the sleek and stylish interior for Suzy's Coffee Lounge in Willis Street. After 23 years in business, the cafe became a landmark and is the subject of the Rita Angus painting ‘At Suzy's Coffee Lounge’ (1967, Te Papa).

After the practice dissolved, Eisenhofer designed Whenua Tapu Crematorium, Porirua, and his internationally regarded dome home in the sand dunes at Peka Peka beach. “In a 2010 interview he told me how this house arose from a long-standing interest of building with the landscape and utilising the earth around it,” says Tanja. “He attended conferences and was active within earth-building communities before designing this house that amalgamates with its surroundings and spans over several levels without stairs. The ambience of individual spaces is that of separate, individual ones but they in fact merge and flow seamlessly into each other to form one interior space.”

The Peka Peka house was his most experimental, and probably most personal, project and he lived there with his wife Helen until he died at 96 years old.

Building the home’s four concrete domes, which were dug deep into the earth, was a labour-intensive project that began in the late 1980s and took four years to complete. In a 2010 interview on Saturday Morning with Kim Hill he said of his career and the home: “You always try to extend the boundaries”, “You progress”, “You experiment”, acknowledging that getting consent for the idiosyncratic, eco-centric design was easy at the time, but would now be “almost impossible”.

John Walsh and Patrick Reynolds included the dwelling in their book Home Work: NZ Architects Own Houses (Random House), and it has been covered in local and international publications. In a feature by The Guardian, an interior photo shows Eero Saarinen Tulip chairs beside the indoor pool – a setting that could been a scene from a Hollywood Hills home. By contrast, from the outside the partially submerged home is both an oddity and a wonder embedded into the rugged coastal landscape.

In his radio interview with Kim Hill, the broadcaster noted that “there’s a certain cache in living in an Eisenhofer house”. With profound modesty and a gentle laugh, Fritz responded “Oh, I don’t know”.