NEW HOUSES FOR OLD

Evening Star, Issue 22462, 6 October 1936, Page 2

NEW HOUSES FOR OLD

BIS SCOPE FOR REBUILDING A strongly supported proposal in Wellington' that a site should be provided for the centennial exhibition by clearing away many shabby old buildings in a central part of the city is a reminder that other cities and towns of New Zealand have plenty of decaying structures, especially houses, which call for replacement. Of course, in some older countries the need for such rebuilding is still greater. For example, Mr Kenneth K. Stowell has a terse title, ‘ Rebuild America,’ for his leading article in a recent issue of ‘ American Architect and Architecture.’ “ We have abandoned a third of onr population by condemning it to live in unfit, unsanitary, uneconomic buildings,” ho declares. “ As building has proceeded outward from tho ccnti’O of our cities, each succeeding spread of new buildings has left behind it areas of decay and blight. Tho mansions of 50 years ago are the rookeries of to-day, and tho rows of flats and jerry-built houses are tho slums which will stand to mock us and to take their toll in the degradation of onr citizens. “ Onr market is the replacement market—nob only -the replacement of onr dwellings, but of our ‘ main streets ’ and our back streets. The hodge-podgo of America’s ‘ main street ’ and former ‘ main streets ’ is neither functionally efficient nor aesthetically satisfying, and cries out for rebuilding on a more scientific pattern, a pattern which considers the 'tempo and requirements of an automotive age. In this rebuilding the advanced technique and the vision of the architect and city-planner must play a more imi portant part than ever before if we are to avoid the mistakes that have reared tho congested, time-wasting accumulations of obsolescent buildings which form our cities. “ It was far easier for our forebears to clear the acreage—cutting down trees and piling up rocks—than it is for us to attack the problems of this now frontier of obsolete buildings, for the debt structure which these buildings represent is far more difficult to remove than tho wood and stones. The financial structure presents more problems than the physical. Until buildings are so financed that the debt vanishes concurrently with tho buildings’ usefulness, even our new buildings will be doomed to the fate of their predecessors. “ Building in America, with a few notable exceptions, has always been of a piecemeal, unorganised, unplanned variety, inaugurated at the whim of the speculative builder or to meet the needs of a particular landholder, without regard for the organisation of the city as a whole. The question of today is whether building will follow this path, or whether it will follow a more enlightened pattern which offers a greater probability of more enduring service. One way out for both tho building industry and for the property owner (or the owner of debt ‘certificates) might be for them to pool their interests in particular localities to undertake lawi-scale developments conforming to tho larger cit3 7 plan. “ Rebuilding is already under way. A new building boom looms on the horizon. To a large extent tho old pattern is being followed. The developments of the past few .years have provided better site-planning, better cityplanning, better ways of building, which point, to a new physical standard for American life. Which pattern will be followed—the old or the new? To rebuild only for immediate speculative profit is to invite the disasters of the past on a still larger scale. To rebuild intelligently with a long-range view toward providing for future needs and future uses is to rebuild well.”