SYSTEM CRITICISED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 221, 19 September 1938, Page 5

SYSTEM CRITICISED.

ARCHITECTURAL WORK. PUBLIC BODY ORGANISATION'. The president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Mr. *H. S. Good-hart-Rendel, in a review of the work of architectural organisations of public bodies (including the Government) remarked that they included some of the ablest men in the profession, and they had produced some excellent designs. "Good results, however, are often for a time produced by bad systems when the bad systems are worked by good men," he continued. "In deploring the inordinate increase of departmental architecture, I know that 1 have the support of many friends, whose high achievement jvithin such departments has done much to distract public opinion from the radical unsoundness .of the system itself. It is a system that may tend in the long run to isolate certain kinds of architecture, and to cut it off from the stream of progress. Departments, however well staffed, must always be in danger of becoming like slot-machines, in which you pay your penny but cannot take your choice! you expect chocolate and chocolate you will get. of admirable quality, but sometimes a little stale.

"If all catering were done by means of slot-machines housekeeping would be easy, and it is not difficult to understand why the heads of Government bodies and of public departments put more and more work into the hands of their own architectural staffs. It is no good pretending to ourselves that this increase will not continue until public opinion becomes convinced that a system which is not good enough for France or Sweden or America is not good enough for us.

"If we wish, as we must, to make our public buildings the best in the world, we must entrust the design of each one of them not to the senior man in a department, or his chosen deputy, not even to the best man in a department (who will not always be the senior), but to the best man for the purpose in the whole profession. That superlatively suitable man may quite possibly be found in the department, but equally possibly he may not. Departments ought to exist, they ought to be treasuries of hoarded experience, but they ought on all important occasion to put this experience at the disposal of architects especially chosen from among all those within or without, whose services are available."