ARCHITECT'S PLACE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 141, 16 June 1936, Page 17

ARCHITECT'S PLACE

COMMUNITY VIEWPOINT

Now that New Zealand is having a revival of building, public and private, many people in tne Dominoin may be interested in some remarks of Charles Marriott on the subject of "The Place of 'the. Architect in the Community," published in a recent issue of the "Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects."

"If I were asked," he stated, "to say briefly:, what is the place of the architect in the community I might say 'everywhere,' and let it go at that; but that, I suppose, would be too much like evading, my obligations. . Therefore, I shall make my answer rather 1 more explicit, and say that the place of the architect is on the ground floor of the commuhity. That is to say, so far from being regarded as the man who puts on ,; the pretties,? the architect should be regarded as the person who decides .the Jay-out, plan, scale, and proporudns Of the social fabric; and the relational one of its parts to another, in so far artW social fabric is material and visible."In deciding these questions he is guided by a sertse of form and order which has been properly trained. It is true.«. .that the architect also. designs what are called 'elevations,' that is to say, the faces visible to the eye of the buildings which have arisen from the lay-out and plan,; but if he is a good architect, he will treat thenx as arisj' ing from the circumstances/'and not as something conceived beforehand and; adapted to the plan as a sort of trimming in relief. So strongly do I feel this that I would almost say that if the architect were always called in to decide the lay-out, plan,, scale, and proportions of the social fabric, the designing of elevations might be left to amateurs.

"As a matteiyof history, the first professional architects, as distinct from master builders, that is to say,, men like Wren and Vanbrugh, were- amtf teurs, and the greatness of their .'vvorkS should not blind us to the fact that the circumstances that they were amateurs,, enamoured of „.the. pictorial effect, has. greatly confused the subsequent his-: tory of architecture. -It cannot be too often repeated that four elevations and a plan do not make an architectural, composition. There must*be between,, them the organic relationship of oria thing growing out of another and determined riri form by its" character* very much as harmonies arid melodies may be derived from a figured base or the physical geography of . a district is expressed in the contour lines upon the map. Briefly, then, the place .of the architect in the community in its material aspect is that of the divinity who shapes our ends."