EFFICIENT HOUSES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 41, 27 November 1937, Page 6

EFFICIENT HOUSES.

“People in the past did not imitate what had gone before,” said Air Anthony Bertram in a broadcast talk advocating the application of modern designs to housing. “They moved from mud and wattle huts, through timberframe cottages to the civilised brick buildings of the 18th century. The dark, insanitary Norman castles, which were purely military, of course, gave way as soon as it was safe to domestic manor houses with large windows and all sorts of comfort, and these in turn gave way to the stately planned houses of the 18th century. Why did the tradition stop then? Why, at the end of that century, did people begin to build imitation Gothic, imitation castles, and why did they get worse until we have the by-pass villa style of to-day ? If we 20th-century •people were logical and traditional we should want a house'that gives us the greatest efficiency and comfort possible for our money and one that looks like what it is, an honest piece of work, not wearing some fancy dress of dead ways of life and dead technique.”