BUILDING DESIGN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23178, 26 October 1938, Page 10

BUILDING DESIGN

WORK OF STUDENTS SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE THE ANNUAL EXHIBITION Even more than previously, this year's exhibition of the School of Architecture, Auckland University College, which will be opened to the public in the college hall this afternoon, shows that the students have real zest for their work and that the teaching is aQ inspiration to imaginative as well an practical effort. This impression is given as much by the many spirited small sketch designs and spare-time exercises as by the elaborate projects which final, year students present as theses for their degrees. The exhibition, which will be open to the public daily until the end of the week, contains five such theses, with a great variety of drawings illustrating almost the whole range of work from beginning to end of the course. Model of Exhibition Many visitors will be interested in a large model representing a scheme for the layout of the New Zealand Cen„ tennial Exhibition at Rongotai, Wellington. The central feature of this design, by J. Haughey, is a circulardomed building intended to contain a large relief map of New Zealand surrounded by water, with ingenious eleo. trical devices to illustrate the progress of settlement, means of communication and so forth. Attached to the building is a lofty observation tower, and other structures are provided for every department of the exhibition. Unfortunately all the drawings for the thesis have been sent to the Royal Institute of Britfsh Architects in London as an example of the school's work. Hew Plymouth Town-planning An exercise of an unusual kind is presented by another student, M. J. Outred, who has re-planned the inner business area of New Plymouth with the object of creating a civic centre and providing better access to and from the railway station on the sea front by means of two diagonal streets. Mr. Outred has also provided complete da» signs for a new station of moderate size and a six-storeyed modern hotel overlooking the ocean. A scheme for a large country mental hospital on the villa system, with buildings to accommodate all classes of patients, has been prepared by J. F. Mair. This student, who is now in Australia, has been invited to assist in designing an institutfto of the same} kind for the Victoriail Government. The subjects of the remaining theses are a railway station for .Christchurch, by C. 0. G. Webb, and a tuberculosis hospital, by Miss M. D. Edwards. The station is a very modernistic building with a great train hall in reinforced concrete. It has been planned to deal with both through and suburban traffic, and a novelty included in the design is a small cinema for the entertainment of waiting passengers. The tuberculosis hospital is a three-storeyed building with an immensely long frontage to the sun, and its very elaborate plan embodies all the most modern principles.

Fuller Use ol Colour A moderate-sized house of two storeys on a site sloping to the sea has been set this year for the Auckland Brick Manufacturers' Prize. The winning design provides for a flat roof and makes ingenious use of a basement for recreation rooms and a garage. First-year exhibits show a change in the curriculum, which now includes study in the elements of all the principal architectural styles, and in the theory and practical use of colour, which is becoming increasingly important in interior decoration as well as in the external design of all classes of buildings. The exhibition will be opened by the president of the college, Mr. W. H. Cocker. It is expected that the ProChancellor of the University of New Zealand, Professor J. Hight, and the Vfce-Chancellor, Professor J. A. Hunter, will be present with mefnben of the Academic Board, which is sitting in Auckland to-day.