MODERN BUILDING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22346, 18 February 1936, Page 17

MODERN BUILDING

TRADITION ABANDONED NEEDS OF A NEW AGE TASKS FOR ARCHITECTS Influences which have combined to produce " modern " architecture and some cf the problems Confronting the present-day designer of buildings are discussed by Mr. E. R. Miller, of Dunedin, in a paper entitled " New Horizons in Architecture," to be read at the annual conference of the New Zealand Institute of Architects in Auckland this week.

At the present rate of progress in science and invention, Mr. Miller remarks, it is not possible to predict the form and appearance of future buildings for more than 50 years ahead. Much depends upon the changing habits of mankind and the course of war and peace. He quotes a passage from a recent imaginative work, envisaging great architectural pylons, cloud-piercing, constructed in adamantine materials formed of artificial atoms. Many of these great structures would be translucent, and at night-time would appear as edifices of light. However, coming back to contemporary problems, Mr. Miller remarks that architecture has become spectacular, not in the old way, with abundance of gilt and acres of carved ornament, but in a broad, clean and honest manner that has won the heart of the public of to-day. Architecture is not scholarly, as it was in the days of the classical styles, and a new classicism has not had time to be evolved. Orderly Eestraint It must be remembered that architecture nearly died of its gentility and only a complete change has revived it. However, the study of the traditionally accepted masterpieces of the past, which were "modern," perhaps even "futuristic," in their day, is an invaluable adjunct to successful designing in a style, which, though it may be entirely divorced from tradition, yet must be based on the guiding principles common to all good architecture. The keynote of the modern style at its best is orderly restraint, which, strangely, permits an amount of freedom and flexibility never before realisable by the designer. The revolutionary outlook upon architecture in certain Continental countries, combined with the need to plan structures for requirements unheard of in the past, and the introduction of new materials, has produced a bewildering variety of forms, the merits of which no one is yet in a position to judge. However, in more conservative countries, where respect for tradition has not been lost, the revolutionary doctrine lias not been so wholeheartedly accepted, and, in the more important public buildings at least, a merging of new forms with classicism indicates that a gradual evolution is in progress. Many New Materials

In addition to the new tasks which have been set them since the beginning 06 the industrial era in the nineteenth century, architects are now called upofi to ciasign such novel structures as terminal bus stations, multifloor garages, broadcasting centres and airports. Necessary changes in the administration and equipment of schools, hospitals, theatres, recreational centres and many other types of -buildings are often so revolutionary as to demand a transformation of plan and form'.

New materials are continually coming into existence and calling for effective architectural embodiment. A few of them are sugar-cano fibre, asbestos, pressed wood, mineral wool, aerated concrete, glass bricks, stainless steel, nickel, aluminium, synthetic leather, new rubber compounds and thermoplastics, such as bakelito, and cellulose and casein derivatives.

Social, economic and political changes, and mechanical progress determine the needs which the architect has to meet and the media with which he is to work. It is left to him to use those media, unhampered by tradition and remaining true to his vow to "design in truth and build in beauty."