THE NEW ARCHITECTURE

Evening Star, Issue 22516, 8 December 1936, Page 2

THE NEW ARCHITECTURE

CLOSE STUDY OF NEEDS “ We must so absorb tbe business or social life of our client that we can solve his problem much better than he can himself,” stated Mr Francis Lome at a meeting of the Manchester Institute of Architects, “We must live the life of our client for a while as an actor lives his character. We must arrive at the door with him, walk into the entrance hall of his building in our imagination as he will do when it is built. We must plan the things he will require, just as he will want them, and so well in fact that ho will be surprised when he finds them. We must take him throughout his building by stairs and lifts to the rooms he will want conveniently placed and in their relative arrangements better than ho could have wished if he arranged them himself, and .when we have done this we have only started our real problem, for we must do it all with distinction and artistry. In doing' this we must not forget the army of his associates and fellow-workers who work with him. We must live their lives for a while and plan for them in the same way. We must develop liberal and generous planning, lines of communication in lifts and stairs, toilets and cloakrooms, keep relative parts always together, kitchens with dining rooms, wards with operating theatres, directors with the staff. Keep service rooms at the heart of the scheme and not push them off somewhere because we are not interested in them architecturally. Everything in a building is important, architecturally, and nothing is unimportant enough to he sacrificed to the arrangement of a Renaissance plan. Whatever we plan will be for 20th-century requirements, not for 16th-century requirements, no matter how good these may have been in their day. “ Finally, above everything else, we must always strive for excellence in our work, irrespective of the _ profit to be made out. of it. This striving for excellence, or in other words * the ideal motive,’ must permeate everything we do. as it will eventually permeate all art and all business. The wild scramble for profits, which is common around us, cripples art, professions, and nearly all business. Anything done for profit alone, or with the idea of bringing notoriety, is false, for profit disappears and notoriety is short-lived, but the ideal solution of a budding problem, for its own sake, has a luting quality, _ The power and splendour of older civilisations have pased away, but many of their buildings still inspire us, and we are able, through them, to catch something of the spirit of those who worked not for profit or glory, but for those qualities which we call the ideals of the human race. We must build in tho spirit of these men, not necessarily m their style, for if they were to build to-day they would express this age in its own way, as they did their own. Wo must approach our work with this ideal and strive always to raise the standard of environment of our people for living, working, and recreation, not only for the few, but for all, and arrange the requirements of this generation with as much beauty as ive can capture from that sort of beauty which is around us always as tho heritage of all peoples.”