When the School of Home Science was founded in 1911, "the noblest profession" for women was seen as home and family life.
The school sought to introduce "scientific and rational housekeeping and child-rearing practices [that] would contribute to the moral and familial wellbeing of the nation," according to Dr Jane Malthus.
She is one of the curators of "Bringing it Home: Pathways from Home Science to Applied Science, University of Otago 1911-2011", an exhibition of the history of the school on show at the Hocken Galleries until March 5.
This coincides with a centennial conference next week.
However, many women managed to subvert the idea that a woman's place was in the home, even if she went to university first.
They went on to have careers, even if unpaid ones, creating the New Zealand we live in today.
They also took the information and skills out into the community for about 60 years, according to Dr Cheryl Wilson, director of the consumer and applied sciences programme.
From the beginning, the home science programme covered a huge breadth of disciplines, emphasising both the scientific side and the artistic, both practical and theoretical, although the balance has changed over the century, as have attitudes towards women.
Reflecting this, the school changed its name to Consumer and Applied Science in the 1980s.
At the time the school was founded, there was a genuine need for improvements in the health of children and housing.
A survey conducted in the 1920s revealed about 25% of houses in New Zealand were substandard.
Today the basic problems are the same, although demands are more complex and requirements more sophisticated, according to Dr Noel Waite, lecturer in design studies which is part of the consumer and applied science programme.
At the other end of the scale, servants were hard to find and keep so domestic tasks even in wealthier households fell back on the housewife, although made easier by the introduction of electricity and labour-saving devices.
"There was a desire - and this stems from the American home economics movement - to bring the value of rational production mode to the household domestic environment," he said.
While science and art have often been seen as two different cultures, from the beginning, the School of Home Science incorporated science, art and technology.
He believes that good design is a holistic enterprise that focuses on humans and how they use things, as well as the technological aspects.
"Design creates preferred situations out of existing ones," he says.
In the early days, "household arts" included interior design, house design, furnishing and administration to enable women to create a home that was efficient and economical.
Courses in laundry, art appreciation, needlework, the history of costume and cooking were taught alongside scientific subjects such as nutrition and chemistry.
"Household arts"expanded when J. E. P.
Murphy arrived in the late 1940s.
He taught design and interior decoration, art history and crafts such as weaving, block printing, metalwork and jewellery.
Murphy was followed by Tom Esplin, who had emigrated to New Zealand from the UK on an Imperial Relations Trust Scholarship in 1952.
From 1955 to 1980 he was senior lecturer in design at the School of Home Science.
Many of his students have fond memories of him and the slides of Europe he presented in his classes.
His slide archive will be on show in the exhibition.
Esplin, an advocate for good industrial design, also fronted a television series, Design for Living, which focused on New Zealand architecture and interior design and inspired the decision to set up the New Zealand Industrial Design Council.
Locally he also helped establish the Otago Potters' Group and served as president of both the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the Otago Art Society.
In those days students might have designed textiles and printed the fabrics.
Today they might still design textiles, but for industrial production rather than hand-making.
However, the sense of craft as care and attention to materials rather than skilled hand-making, aligns with today's sustainable and ethical values, Dr Waite said.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, students had to make a child's dress by hand with smocking and pintucking, using fine cotton and almost invisible thread.
One of the exquisite tiny dresses in the exhibition was made using thread unravelled from the fabric, according to Dr Malthus.
At the other end of the scale was the high couture standard of dressmaking taught by M.
René Thevenot, a French designer, who was on the staff in the late 1940s and later by Avice Bowbyes and Rae Vernon.
Some of the beautifully made garments will be on display.
From the 1970s and '80s the programme became more research-focused although still acknowledging the importance of the arts, according to Dr Wilson.
For example, the study of textiles concentrated more on research, technical product development, performance, functional clothing and protective clothing, while courses in design and fashion construction are now taught by Otago Polytechnic, she said.
In the 1980s, again following the trends in the US, design studies were introduced.
According to Dr Waite, the design course at Otago is the only one in New Zealand that has been in a science faculty from the start, and is informed by science, technology and art.
Design studies aims to apply knowledge creatively in problem-solving and is never just about design alone.
It is always about design and another subject - anything from anthropology to zoology, and so can be seen occupying a spectrum from science to art, the student determining where on that spectrum they sit, he says.
He has just returned from the UK where, as a result of the recession, they are talking about "Austerity Britain" a period during and after World War 2 when everything was constrained because of the war effort.
Nevertheless, a lot of innovative design arose from those constraints.
There was a boom in design in industrialised countries as technology developed and applied for war purposes was applied to rebuilding society.
One of the best examples was the Vespa motor scooter, made by a firm that had made planes for war.
The scooters were cheap and attractive to both men and women and became a symbol of Italian culture that gave them a break from association with fascist culture, he said.
"We don't have the man-made constraints of a war, but I think the majority of the science community accepts that human beings have made a significant impact on the environment and how are we going to deal with that.
Some of the answers are in the past but need to be updated for new technology and for the way culture has developed."
Although the founders of the school in 1911 were setting out to create a better future - a preferred situation out of the existing one around the home - he does not think they could have imagined what it would become today.
We take things for granted and it's only by looking back that you realise how far we have come, he said.
"'Home' in home science has become a lot bigger. What we consider to be our home now has changed. The core values of the place where we live with our family are still there, but we've come to appreciate our home is this planet. We've only got this one and we've got to make it work, make it a better place."
See it
"Bringing it Home" is on display at the University of Otago's Hocken Gallery until March 5.