A CITY OF GLASS

Evening Star, Issue 20139, 2 April 1929, Page 5

A CITY OF GLASS

GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE BUILDINGS RAISED ON STILTS GARDENS ALOFT IN SKY. Houses built of glass and steel. Great skyscrapers so constructed that every room will have its full quota of sunshine. Shops and large stores biylt in tiers, with promenades to 6acu tie above the street, and window displays, restaurants, and orchestras on the teiraces. These are only a few or the features of the London that will use in the future, says Oliver P. Bernard, in the ‘ Sunday Express.’ It is the vision of a London that must come, unless we are to struggle perpetually in an ever-growing congestion. If ”there is one startling tact f.?-day, it is this—that the vast majority of what we call “ modern buildings are hopelessly obsolete, ive have houses that keep out air and sun, enormous blocks of shops and offices that do the same, and, in general, an architectural method utterly unsuited to the needs of present-day transport. Our houses harbour dust and dirt, they require complicated and expensive systems of ventilation, and they deni and continuous artificial lighting, save in a small proportion of their rooms. High buildings in crowded areas cut off light and air from each other, and from the streets between them, and for all their imposing appearance are simply gigantic engineering and architectural failures. SCIENTIFIC PLANNING.

How will this be remedied? it will be remedied by making use of simpler, unornamented designs, scientifically planned interiors, fittings and furniture, and the efficient utilisation of modern materials, such as steel, concrete, and glass. The most brilliant architects on the Continent and in the United States have led the way with new designs, and the time is not far off when we shall see those designs as realities. We shall live in a London built on great piers. The old method of digging down and building on foundations that let in damp and rot will be, abandoned, and with it the unhealthiness, inconvenience, and inefficiency of basements. The new buildings on stilts will increase road space to an incalculable extent, since traffic will be able to run beneath them. There will he gardens full of trees and flowers, swimming pools, ornamental lakes, recreation grounds—all in the heart of the city, under great buildings of steel, glass, and concrete.

These buildings will be constructed on the “zone” plan, already practised in America, by which, for each hundred feet of height the structure must be set back ten feet. The successive terraces thus provided will not be wasted, but turned into promenades, gardens, and hanging hundreds of feet up in the air, free to the sun and the wind! STREETS AT DIFFERENT LEVELS.

Down below there will be special streets at different levels for the various grades of traffic, while pedestrians will be able to walk, for business and shopping purposes, at what will then be “ground floor level” — actually first floor level. The most modern garden city will inevitably disappear. It is already being realised that as a solution to the town-planning problem the garden city idea is almost useless. It is no good spreading indefinitely outwards, eating up the countryside, and making tlie journey to and from business increasingly Jong. When we build upwards we shall have a compact, accessible, healthy city, full of light and beauty. We shall have the true garden citv.

One of the great features of this future London will be the use made of glass. People are accustomed to think of glass as a fragile, brittle substance, only fit ior windows, mirrors, drinking vessels, and so on. The fact is that glass when used in sufficient thickness, is one of the toughest materials known. It can easily be used not merely for windows, but for walls, both interior and exterior, for floors, doors, and even pillars. The means of supply is inexhaustible—we have all the Sahara t) dniib on, if need he—and the methods of treating glass are practically limitless. It can be painted, enamelled, dyed, etched, sand-blasted, decorated, moulded—anything that artistic invention or utility can dictate. Also, it is cheap, clean, and therefore healthy. It is non-absorbent, does not harbour dust, and is absolutely dampproof. LAMP-POSTS FORE OTTEX.

It will solve the whole question of natural and artificial lighting, since buildings constructed largely of glass can he made self-illuminating. Lighting schemes will be incorporated in the actual fabric, and in the nights of the future we shall have houses made of light. Dingy lamp-posts will be forgotten, for light will then he radiated in great masses, or concentrated for special purposes, according to need. With all this, of course, there will be a greatly extended use oT e|ectricity and electrical domestic apparatus. The housewife of a hundred years lienee will no more dream of being without a full electrical home equipment than the housewife of to-day dreams of being without a water supply. It must not bo thought that these visions of a steel and glass city are mere dreams. Already in Germany an achitect has prepared plans for flats and other buildings of steel and glass, and in Paris the structural use of these materials is increasing by leaps and bounds. A REMARKABLE HOUSE.

The great needs of our modern cities are light, air, and space, and those needs will be met in the ways I have outlined. In England at' present there is a remarkable house; it is, in fact, the most remarkable house in the whole country. It was built at Northampton by Professor P. Eehrens and .Mr EassettLowke, and it represents architecture reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms. It is 100 years ahead of any building in the kingdom. Though it is not the glass house of the future, it is built on the essential principles that will, govern the houses of to-morrow—design and decoration, made to follow Function and purpose, not utility put last and mere ornamentation first.

1 look to the time when every member of the community, no matter whether rich or poor, busy or idle, will be able to live under identical basic conditions of health, light, comfort, and beauty. I look to the time when we shall walk with our friends on summer evenings among fountains and gardens, far above the dome of St. Paul’s, while down below the commerce of the city moves on swift wheels that are never forced to a standstill by such an historic relic as a traffic block.