DEVELOPING CONCRETE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 30 August 1924, Page 14

DEVELOPING CONCRETE.

EVOLVING THE PERFECT

BUILDING

“For untold centuries men have tashioned their buildings out of bricks, stone and timber. These materials have been a commonplace since the earliest civilisation. "With these from the most rudimentary structures men evolved the perfect buildings which have graced successive civilisations. It may he .said that the limit of achievement with these materials has been hut only after a great space of time,” Sir E. Owen Williams in the Morning Post. “A new material has come to the fore iii recent years in the shape of concrete. Many attempts have been made to use it* along the lines laid down by older materials, and quite naturally the results have been disappointing and ungainly. This is not the fault of the material. It has been misused.

“The lesson to he taught by a new material is twofold. There is grammar of the material, its strength and properties, which is the province of the engineer. The expression of the material is the province of the architect. In the earlier stages of learning the lesson the two are at war. It is too seldom that the engineer appreciates the utility of beauty. Boauty building is not unoconolineal. It is a mistake to suppose that ugliness pays. The architect who is confronted with a new material too seldom realises that he must learn a different language of expression if lie is to achieve a beautiful result. He is no willing pupil of his teacher, the material. He clings haltingly to idioms and phrases of the languages of brick and stone, and mingles them with some hastily acquired slang of the.new material. The result is neither one thing nor the other.

“If lie applies to the engineer for help m the grammar the engineer supplies him with very correct learniim and the final result runs the risk of being as stilted and ungainly as' the early speech of a language ' student who declaims sentences about ‘the uncle of the gardener’s wife.’ The cure is the same as the cure for the anguage student. He must go and live in the country. In other words the architect must rid himself of all preconceived notions taught hv brick and stone, and immerse himself in the study of the new material.

“A considerable time must elapse before the ‘concrete sense’ can lie acquired ; that is to say, before any single individual can ‘achieve a complete and easy mastery of both the engineering and architectural technique. The engineer and the architect have a long road to travel before their separate roles ran be played by one man.

The immediate economy of concrete will compel its increasing use to satisfy the ever-growing demands of social and industrial conditions. If its use is unaccompanied by beauty its economy will he. a mockery and a delusion. We are indebted’to the last centuiy for the discovery of concrete. I his century is charged with its useful development.”