ARCHITECTURE TO-DAY

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21536, 27 July 1935, Page 19

ARCHITECTURE TO-DAY

• — : - ITS HINT OP TO-MORROW CaPKciALLT warns* von this rasas.) [By D. A. 6. WARD.] In this century the Western world has seen the steady growth of a distinctive form of architecture. In reinforced concrete, steel, and glass, tie new buildings are severely designed, with plane surfaces given horizontal accent by flat roofs and long lines of window. Applied ornament and all unessential are rejected in the search for simp icity. In domestic and public buildings there is an ins.stence on sunlight and air which is truly expressive of modern ideas of living. For some of- us these austere shapes hold all the freshness and the stimulation of a glimpse into a new and better world. There are others to whom they are the hideous symptoms of a disease that has attacked all the arts. The average man's reaction varies with his knowledge and his prejudices. Taught to see beauty only in the past, we are slow to understand the strange forms born of a changing world. As in all the arts, the artists themselves are divided. To Sir Reginald Blomfield, for instance, modernism is a vicious movement threatening to destroy "that literature and art which is our last refuge from a world that is becoming more and more mechanised every day."

Art and the Age

Such a critical approach to modernism is based on a fallacy. The arts have never been a refuge—least of all architecture, the master art and the one that is closest to our social life and needs. It seems nearer the truth to say (as Mr H. G. Wells has said) that the arts, with science and philosophy, are the very core of life and its chief directive function. They reflect man's impression of the present and his attempt to adjust himse'f to the future. They record the changing and developing thought of the -ace. If that is true, we can better understand new movements by seeing them in relation to the thrust and stress of social change. Since history began, the practical needs rising from new influences in community life, changes in scale, novel ways of warfare, the spread of new .religions, have found expression in the buildings of the various ages. The minaret, loveliest thing in Islamic architecture, was the result of a need for a commanding point from which crowds of people could be called together to listen and to worship. Perhaps we may find in the books, the music, the paintings, and the buildings of our age a clue to the way the world is going. . Periods in which the trend in art has been towards exact representation have been followed in the past by phases of the formal and symbolic. An exuberance of realism seems at last to create against itself a reaction to severity and abstraction. There is a striking example of this in the change frcm the realism of the Graeca-Roman period to the conventions of Byzantine and the geometrical patterns of Moslem art. Something simfar has happended to painting and sculpture -in recent years. Towards the close of last century they reached the end of an imitative phase, and the trend is now towards symbolism and abstraction. That trend finds its architectural aspect in the modern austerity of design. Interwoven with, and emphasising the drift towards a climax of imitativeness were the social influences of the nineteenth century. The rising middle of commerce became the patrons of the arts. Architectural design fell into decay, and architects became mere reproducers of the antique. The rich manufacturer could have his house built in any style he wished, from classic to Queen Anne or Scotch Baronial. Banks and public buildings were respectably dressed in pediments and colonnades. Interiors suffered agonies of indigestion from the Victorian habit of random ornament. French and German architects had a little more initiative, but England left for the twentieth century

a dreary legacy. It fell to the architects of our time to make bold use of the new materials their precursors had the opportunity of us.ng. Meanwhile in a single century Europe's population had been treb ed. To the great centres of industry came increasing swarms of humans who were housed in rows of shelters that | were small and horrible. To-day i London is facing the problem of replacing her huge slums w.th healthy dwellings.

Economy In the New Architecture However much an inevitable reaction swayed the ideas of the modern group, it is clear that in any case the end of last century would have seen a surge of vitality and initiative in architecture. Mankind had found new powers, new resources. Machinery had brought into being synthetic materials that held exciting possibilities of construction and design. The new impulse found its first expression in America, whose architects experimented boldly with these new plastic materials under the spur of wealth and opportunity. Later there came to the old world the sociological stimulus of war's aftermath. It is significant that after the war the modern buildings spread more quickly in Germany than in any other country. There the need for economic building was great, for of all the European countries that were busy with housing schemes Germany could least afford to spend. The importance of economy as a cause in the spread of modern architectural ideas cannot be over-stated. Tne scientific use of reinforced concrete and steel, mass production of I materials, and the standardisation of building units together meet the new social needs in the most effective way. Standardisation is a word from which jesthetes turn in horror, but we must remember that when it is applied to cons' ruction al units it does not apply to design. The architect still creates, and whether or not his creation will be good rests v/ith the man. The mechanical revolution has been of immense consequence in human affairs. Slowly and with many blunders civilisation is being rebuilt on a base of cheap mechanical power. It is this painful change from ah order founded on manpower that sets our present stage of civilisation apart from all those that have gone before. Our way now is the way of the machine. Instead of being a thing to take refuge from, it can be in our hands a liberating force, bringing future generation*to a new life of knowledge and nower. Inevitably such a potent influence is reflected in the arts, especially in the art which at the worst of times is sustained by material needs. So modern architecture tries to absorb all the that thr machin" can give it. At the root of its theory, exnressed in it" nrrctre. is a truth tw i<* o"'v fawning on the mind of man, the truth that there can be a union between artistic and mechanical considerations. So at first there came the dogma that anything perfectly adapted to its function was beautiful, and therefore that was the only kind of perfection to be worked for. Compete efficiency remains a primary aim. but the modern men have travelled beyond extreme functionalism. Their work is essentially a nlanning for a purno"e. and in usin*? their creative power under the discipline of that purpose thev seek a beauty which is not merrlv in an -innljpri but prows f-om th° task itself. Tt is ri»'t«» aiif" to th n ir ideas to a thing and then to decorate it.

Engineer-Artist Their approach to their work is scientific, and in that tney are in tune with the modern spirit of science and enquiry. There are probably few people yet who will agree; that an engineer should be an artist, but there are many who say that if an artist does structural work he should be an engineer. The modern men are using in their experiments all the knowledge and tne instruments that science gives them. They are also trying to relate their work to sociological problems. The younger men in particular are intensely aware of the process of I change in the structure of society. They are trying to analyse that process and then to make a synthesis on which to base their ideas of design In each of twenty countries, including Great Britain, a group has been formed of architects, engineers, town planners, and allied technicians, with a plan of research into social, economic, and technical conditions. Nothing is harder than an attempt to foresee the results of the deep-hidden forces that are working themselves out to-day. But if our theory of the arts as the core of life is a right one, we may learn from the new architecture, experimental as it still is, a little of what is happening. Its most obvious aspects speak of a drive towards an ordered simplicity in daily life. Its cosmopolitanism reflects the change of scale that is stowly welding an unprepared world of isolated nations into a single community. It is in open alliance with science, with all that science implies—first analysis, then synthesis, and the building of a consistent vision of reality. Existing traditions are not enough, and an attempt is being made at exact thinking and deliberate planning. In all this there seems to be a turning away from irrelevance to the discipline of broad directive ld-jas. And there are signs to tell us that beneath the confusions of to-day and the indifference of the mass 0.. men the active and serious minority in the race is reaching out in a collective effort towards a future life of order and harmony and beauty.