A CITY OF GLASS

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 April 1929, Page 2

A CITY OF GLASS

GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE.

Houses built of glass and steelGreat skyscrapers so constructed that every room will have its full quota of sunshine. Shops and large stores built in tiers, with promenades to each tier above the stret, and window displays, restaurants, and orchestras on the terraces. These are only a few of the features of the London that will rise 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 fact today, it is this—that the vast majority of. what we call ‘modern’ buildings are hopelessly obsolete. We 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 demand 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 form the streets between them, and for all their imposing appearance are simply gigantic engineering and architectural failures. How will this be remedied? It will be remedied by making use of simpler, unornamented designs, scientifically planned interiors, fittings and furniture, and the effiicent 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 be 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 gardens—gardens hundreds of feet up in the air, free to the sun and the wind I

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 x city idea is almost useless. It is no good spreading indefinitely outwards, eating up the. countryside, and making the journey to and from business increasingly long. TVhen we build upwards we shall have a compact, accessible, healthy city, full of light and beauty. We shall have the true garden city. 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 for 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 to draw on, if need be—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 damp-proof. It will solve the ■whole question of natural and artificial lighting, since

buildings constructed largely of glass can be 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 be radiated in great masses, or concentrated for special, purposes, according to need.

With all this, of course there will.be i, greatly extended use of electricity ind electrical domestic apparatus. The lousewife of a hundred years hence vill no more dream of being without t full electrical home equipment than he housewife of to-day dreams of beng without a water supply.

It must not be thought that these visions of a steel and glass city are mere dreams. Already in Germany an architect has prepared plans for .flats

nd other buildings of steel and glass,

and in Paris the structural use of these materials is increasing by leaps and bounds. 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. Behrens and Mr BassettLowke, and it represents architecture reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms. It is one hundred 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.