BUILDINGS, OLD AND NEW

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 26 August 1941, Page 5

BUILDINGS, OLD AND NEW

THE TEST OF TIME Much of our knowledge must come i from the past because architecture, like : law and other fundamental activities, I works cumulatively by a series of slow [tests (says a British reviewer). Worth j in a building is measured by the satisfaction. material and artistic, it continues to give over a series of generations. Thus a good concert-room, like the Gewandhaus at Leipsig. continues to please musicians and satisfy audiences generation after generation, until it becomes a tradition and a standard in itself. Its design was not a matter of luck; its architects handled a tradition intelligently and handed it on to others. On the other hand. Street's Law Courts in London have not stood their test; though grand and dignified to the eye, they are an enduring handicap to the proper hearing of cases. The “Past” is full of buildings that have been and still are being tested, and the testing process is architectural history. History for the student of architecture is a record of experiments of which he cannot afford to be ignorant. The architect of to-day, however “modern” he may think himself, is equally part of the historical process. If he draws a dividing line between himself and his predecessors he blinds himself to the true nature of his w'ork. Ho cannot help carrying on a tradition, but he can do so intelligently and unintelligently. Civilised humanity is past, present and future, contingent and interrelated. We both benefit and suffer from those who have preceded us. Sir Christopher Wren said: “An architect ought to be jealous of novelties in which fancy blinds the judgment: and to think hii judges as well those who arc to live five centuries after him as those of hi«