ARCHITECT’S ADVICE

Grey River Argus, 6 December 1938, Page 11

ARCHITECT’S ADVICE

"CROWD VICES OUT WITH VIRTUES.” Mr. H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, was in philosophic mood at a recent meeting of that body, it we do not want architecture to become one of the more boring arts 1 think we must take great care not to level it up and down to mediocrity by any dictation of taste,” he said. "The kind of restriction that may prevent bad architecture is very much apt to prevent good architecture, too, and although we must never encourage designs that seem to deserve that famous word in our instructions to panels, ‘illiterate,’ we,must rememberj that there can be a compensation in some illiterate architecture parallell to, that in illiterate painting which has made the vogue of the douanier Rousseau. The safest rule of life that I know is—never fight vices; crowd vices out with virtues —and I fancy that we shall fight bad architecture much less effectually by methods of, direct repression than by crowding it, out with good. | "In this company I need not fear to say all this, although in a company not chiefly composed of architects it might be liable to misinterpretation. To guard against such misinterpretation even here, I must add that I hay® the warmest possible sympathy with the devoted work of voluntary architectural panels all over the country, in so far as that work is constructive, which the greater part of it is. What I fear is the assumption of those powers by bodies of doubtful qualification since this with our growing English docility towards living under rules might not be impossible. . “If we are to make architectural history, we must build into it the aspirations of individuals as well as those of local government. Art is order, or, at any rate, is based on order, and as architects we have an enormous contribution to make to the well-ordered life of the nation. But art is also imagination and—though the word is much abused fancy. It is our mission not only to give people what their bodies need but also what appeals, to their imz agination, what tickles their fancy. _ "The great need in all artists is common 'sense, by which I don’t mean ■ what you and I have and what the other fellow hasn’t, but the sense that persons of very diverse tastes and temperaments can have in common. This common sense, I think, is more often reached by people playing a game than by people fighting for a cause and I therefore believe that the one thing almost above all others that we must try to recapture in our architecture'is the happy element of play.”