STANDARDS IN HOUSING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 June 1937, Page 3

STANDARDS IN HOUSING

AMERICAN ARCHITECT’S CRITICISM T|ie modern “fetish of standards” is criticised by Ralph Walker, an American architect, in "Pencil Points,” “This belief that in standardisation there are inherent virtues is a result of an acknowledgment of national poverty, and it has become the basis of a hope that through its further development additional wealth may be created and also that a perfection of life can be achieved,” he writes. “But the entire belief in standardisation is one in which I believe there lias been enormous confusion of opinion. Again we find the engineer a protagonist, for it is the engineer who fixes standards in the belief that ‘we must aim at the fixing ot standards in order to face the problem of perfection. “However, the inventor (he who has helped homo sapiens stand erect) is in constant revolt against a fixation of objective, lor he realises that standardare the wheel ruts of a civilisation, nnd he professes that perfection comes not from the fixation of a standard but through constant, planned change. “Too often a fixation of a standard means that no further thought is given to the fundamentals within the problem. This is illustrated in the Parthenon which fulfilled the possibility of perfection within the Greek doric and ’stultified further progress. It wrote finis to an epoch as well as to a people. “Experiment or sccial values may fix a standard, and then further experiment or a new social factor may upset it. Always the relation of a standard : to ultimate perfection is to be judged ’ i?y ihe amount and quality and experi mentation which continues, | “But standardisation, in architecture ■ especially, means the arrival at a rest j period or a fatigue point. It means a ! style. When architectural standardise- ( tion is fixed wholly from social standardisation it means that experimenting has come to an end, and too often as a £ result there happens a sense of futile superiority,

“No matter how charming a Japanese house is as the social concepts of a new and changing Japan take hold upon the people, a different character of house will also develop and a new set of values will come into being. For we must remember that not only are standards capable of change but also thos ll ideals of perfection which may be the goal of those standards. ‘We are inclined to interpret the meaning of the word ‘standards’ as meaning something which is fixed when what we really desire is the set ting up of a value or a point of measurement against which we can mark degrees of change and that itself should move

“We speak continually about the de sirability of making building standards and standard specifications and standard details, but so great has been the constant change in our building methods that very few af the standards used in 1920 are valid to-day.”