Few Signs Of Gracious Living In New Zealand

Northern Advocate, 30 June 1949, Page 8

Few Signs Of Gracious Living In New Zealand

AUCKLAND, Thu. (Sp.).—-New Zealand today was full of shoddy goods, Professor C. R. Knight, senior professor at the Auckland University College School of Architecture, told the newly-formed Design Guild in Auckland yesterday. - “New Zealand is full of shoddy goods,' shoddy houses, shoddy cities—and the implements we use, the very tools of trade, are shoddy, too,” he said.

“Just here and there,” Professor Knight continued, “we find something gracious—a Sehvyn church, a modern home, a piece of silver or even a garden spade—but they are hard to find, and I must be pardoned if I wish we had not fallen into the evil of making anything do for the job of living.

spiration given to man by doing that job perfectly and the enjoyment he received by doing it well. “If we start to do a job in a slovenly manner,” he said, “making do, the time comes when the whole fabric becomes repulsive. “It has become a collection of illconsidered,. unsatisfactory units, and working with it is ineffective.” One of the tragedies of urbanised living as created by the industrial revolution was the divorce of art from living—the worship of material functionalism at the expense of aesthetic emotionalism.

"We have many things in New Zealand of which we are proud. "The glorious countryside, the mountains, lakes and beaches, high wages, short working hours, universal education —all commonly called the high standard of living. "But can it be a high standard of living when good design is rated so low ? ” The excuse put forward for bad design and shoddy goods, said Professor Knight, was that they would "do the job," ignoring the neglect of the in-

Generations had grown up educated to believe that art was something to enjoy with leisure, playing little part in the everyday life of the individual. The failure was not in realising that true gracious living was a unification of the material and aesthetic.