INDIAN ARCHITECTURE.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16507, 26 April 1919, Page 7

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE.

r-4 : CHRISTCHUKCH MAX'S TRAVEL^. Leaving Now Zealand with quite ordinary ideas, Mr J. F. Munnings, formerly of Addington, has returned to ViU native land as one of the best known ! architects of the East, and a man who i has. as it were, made architectural fame amongst the people of the Northoast Coast of India. Mr Munnings was primarily engaged in Christchurch with tho firm of Hurst Seager and . Wood, but in 1910 he conceived the idea of going to London, where ho learned many of the preliminary phases of Continental and Eastern architecture. Being particularly interested in the East he went out to India, under Governmont appointment, and as assistant Government architect ho saw a great deal of this interesting country. He was appointed to the architects' staff of tho Secretariat of State for India,-and in that capacity he saw a groat deal of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and ultimately he went to Dccca, where, under an advanced schome of education, he designed tho capital for the province. The architectural design, and also the civil design of this place was most interesting, and Mr Munnings, by his suggestive drawings, succeeded in-making a town which was replete with collees,

universities, and schools. After the amalgamation of the provinces of Bahur and Orissa, Mr Mtmnings had his temporary headquarters at Rnnehi, on the Chotanagupur Platoan, in which place he had the honour of observing, and, subsequently, designing, the Government House. The site of this particular Government House, it might Dβ mentioned, had been the permanent headquarters of the old-timo chieftains, and when Patna fell, as it did years before the invasion, there was much talk as to what should be the future procedure Eventually it was decided to form a new capital at Patua, aud it foil to the lot of Mr Munnings to design the new town. Mr Munnings paid particular attention to roads, etc.,. and in the matter of town-planning he made, as it wore, a small revolution, the new capital eventually coming to light as a town, the like of which no Indian had previously known, so perfect were the roads, avenues of trees, contour of the houses, etc. As a matter of fact, the new town of Patna was purely a product of the new vigorous policy being introduced into India. Patna, it may he stated, dated as far back as the great Patilaputra, to the third century B.C. The new city was built, and in contrast to the- older one, it made a great show of colleges, universities, the Government House, the Secretariat, tho High Court, and, incidentally, the Post and Telegraph, and by such means it became a city of considerable importance, due very largely to the architectural designs of Mr Munnings. As a matter of fact, the building of the now city was not quite completed when Mr Munnings left for New Zealand last November, on leave from his Indian volunteer regiment. The total cost of this city, it ma? be pointed out, was just over £1,000,000, whereas a similar venture in .New Zealand ■ would cost from two to twe and a half million pounds. The provinces of Behar and Orissa, by the way, have a population of over 30,000,000, In addition to the work of building the new capital. Mr Munnings had tc design work all over the province mainly schools, colleges, courts, watertowers, etc., while he also designed the great school of vaccine, at Nankum, to which hundreds and thousands of the infected people of India flock yearly. In Patna, a great college is being built. There are three outlying colloges, all built to Mr Manning's design. ' Such schools designed by Mi Munnings are making their appearance everywhere, and are costing a verj great deal of money, from £70,000 tc £27,000. '■ . Speaking of the Indian universities, Mγ Munnings said that there were twe great things that differentiated them from our own English universities, namely, caste and , climate. Proceeding, ho said that the majority of his builSings had been made of brick and stone (the latter from Moizapar). The roofs of the buildings were, in the majoritj of cases, fully flat, but in some cases, tiles, similar to those used in this city, had been requisitioned. —As far as the buildings generally were concerned, their outstanding feature was the wide verandah, round all sides of the house. Speaking of local conditions in New Zealand, Mr Munnings expressed the opinion that the climate of New Zealand made every difference to the schemes of town-planning. Speaking with particular reference to Christchurch and its proposed Town Hall, he said that, in his opinion, there could be no difficulty in tne matter of selecting a site, for the simple reason that there was only one possible sitey—that overlooking the river in Victoria square. With regard to town-planning generally, he thought that it was a great pity that more attention was not paid to the facades of buildings, bo to speak, the architecture of our streeta was chaotic, .lacking cohesion and thought. It would be a pleasure to see some of the district-or rather, household—gardens, so attended to that they would attract general attention, outside the actual city. In the future, he hoped an effort would be made to develop the streets of the city and the domestic architecture of dwellings on the Home lines, and not so much on the American, or more particularly on Californian lines, which were making their presence so much felt at present, and which looked so much as though the architecture had been culled from book or magazine. Again, concluded Mr Munnings', Englishmen nad often compared this and other cities of the Dominion with England. He hoped that Christchureh and the other towns would so oxercise themselves in their , I future buildings that they would ■ i beco.Tie not reminiscent of Engi land, but distinctly of a Now Zea- > land type. In a New Zealand town, r j nobody wanted a bit of Liverpool, a - bit of Manchester, a bit of London, etc, - but a real New Zealand hearted town, i made for New Zealanders t occupied by i New Zealanders, and quite disttinctivo > of New Zealand. r '

1 Mrs Broadhead, of Wangaxrni, has re--3 ceived word that her brother (Corporal \ Victor Anderson), captured with the * Otagos, is still missing in Germany, and " his whereabouts cannot yet be traced. ' It appears that in April of last year * 204 of the Entrenching Battalion were r captured and taken prisoners by the 1 Germans. In August Mrs Broadhead's * people received a note from her broa ther, written on a very dirty piece of - paper, to the effect that he was well 1 and "still going strong." The letter 9 had the Wurtemberg stamp mark on " it. Since then no farther information '» has been received from him. The High r Commissioner was communicated with, k and he has replied to the effect that a every 1 step wonld be taken to ascertain k tlie missing corporal's whereabouts. A y cablegram has now been received from y the Base Records Office that of the 204 tj captured 200 have been accounted for, : leaving four still to be traced. It is [. hoped that the search for the missing i man, w m be successful.