BASIC PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 128, 2 June 1938, Page 19

BASIC PROBLEM.

UTILITY WITH BEAUTY.

NEED IN ARCHITECTURE. A British statesman, Sir Philip Sassoon, held the attention of hie audience when he proposed the toast of the Royal Institute of British Architect* at the annual dinner of that body. "A basic problem," he said, "ie that a way should be found with the means available to Uβ of combining utility with beauty. lam sure you will agree with me that ornament and embellishment by themselves are of little purpose. For instance, I do not think they have ever made a bad building into a good building. On the other hand, if utility ie the only end then there is no place for art in architecture.

"That brings us to o'lir chief difficulty. What for thousands of years has been considered by mankind ae the criterion of beauty is now challenged. I personally do not think that that challenge will last, but it existe and is responsible for many of the buildings which have been put up since the war, buildings which perhaps I would be surprised to sec future generations consider worthy to be regarded as ancient monuments.

"Xow, no doubt there ie an element of beauty in sheer force and power. But ■that is one of the elements which the generations of the paet heve always considered to be one of the components of the beautiful. One of those elements is proportion—or scale, which I am told ie the right way to pronounce it. Scale is not easy to define; it ie easier to realise the presence of proportion or the absence of proportion than to be able to eay exactly of what it consists.

"So often you hear people talking glibly about proportions and saying that a certain building is no good because the proportions are all wrong, or saying that another building ie beautiful because the proportions are right. Those of us who have seen, for instance, the Doge's Palace in Venice, that top-heavy superstructure on its little dachshund legs, will realise that it is certainly not proportion that makee it one of the most beautiful and satisfying buildings in the world. I have just come back from a holiday in the United States, and there I must say that I did find those stupendous buildings in Xew York gave me a sense of proportion. Xot only were they built on a tremendous scale" but it seemed to me that they were built with immense taste; these big buildings were finished almost with the detail of a Cartier cigarette box.

"Now. I think that the great cities of the world have each their own individual architecture, and it seems to me that proportion should conform in each case to that individual atmosphere. I can admire flkyscrapers in Xew York, l>ut I cannot conceive of them in our London streets. I think that when one visits Paris one conies back with the memory of its monuments; the Arc de Triomphe, the Pavilions of Gabriel in the Place de la Concor'de, the Louvre, its bridges, and so on.

"I have always found that the charm and the character of London lies in those email Georgian houses, so many of which have unfortunately been disap]>earing of late, and which have been replaced in too many cases.. I think, by buildings which have no character of their own."