NEW HOUSES FOR OLD

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 3 October 1936, Page 10

NEW HOUSES FOR OLD

DIG SCOPE FOlt RE-BUILDING A strongly-supported proposal in Wellington that a site should be provided for the Centennial Exhibition by clearing away many shabby old buildings in a central part of the city is a reminder that other cities and towns of New Zealand have plenty of decaying structures, especially houses, which call for replacement. Of course, in some older countries, the need of such re-building .is still greater. For example Mr Kenneth K. Stowell has a terse title, "Rebuild America,” for his leading article in a recent issue of “American Architect and Architecture.” “We have abandoned a third of our population by condemning it to live in unfit, unsanitary, uneconionic buildings,” he declares “As building has proceeded outward from the centre of our cities, each succeeding spread of new buildings has left behind it areas of decay and blight. The mansions of fifty years ago are the rookeries of to-day, and the rows of flats and jerry-built houses are the slums which will stand to mock us and to take their toll in the degradation of our citizens. “Our market is the replacement market —not only the replacement of our dwellings but of our ‘Main Streets’ and our back streets. The hodgepodge of America’s ‘Main Street’, and former ‘Main Streets’ is neither functionally efficient nor esthetically satisfying, and cries out for re-build-ing on a more scientific pattern, a pattern which considers the tempo and requirements of an automotive age. In this rebuilding, the advanced technique and the vision of the architect and city-planner must play a more important part than ever before, if we are to avoid the mistakes that have reared the congested, timewasting accumulations of obsolescent buildings which form our cities. “It was far easier for our forebears to clear the acreage—cutting down trees and piling up rocks —than it is for us to attack the problems of this new frontier of obsolete buildings for the debt structure which these buildings represent is far more difficult to remove than the wood and stones. The financial structure presents more problems than the physical. Until buildings are so financed that the debt vanishes concurrently with the buildings’ usefulness. even our now buildings will be doomed to the fate of their predecessors.

j “Building in America, with a few 'notable exceptions, has always been l of a piecemeal, unorganised, unplanned variety, inaugurated at the whim of the speculative builder or to meet the needs of a particular landholder without regard for the organisation of the city as a whole. The I question of to-day is whether build- : ing will follow this path, or wheth--1 er it will follow a more enlightened ' pattern which offers a greater probability of more enduring service. One , way out for both the building in- [ clustry and for the property owner ’ (or the owner of debt certificates) ! might be for them to pool their in-' terests in particular localities to un•dertake large scale developments con.' forming to the larger city plan. \ j “Rebuilding is already under way j j A new building boom looms on the ; horizon. To a large extent the old ‘ pattern is being followed. The de- j

velopmcnts of the past tew years have provided better site-planning, better city-planning, better ways of building, which point to a new physical standard for American life. Which pattern will be followed—the old or the new. To rebuild only for immediate speculative profit is to invite the disasters of the past on a still larger scale. To rebuild intelligently with a long range view toward providing for future needs and future uses is to rebuild well.”