Architects Roused

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 689, 14 June 1929, Page 11

Architects Roused

WAIKATO APPOINTMENT Hospital Board Criticised ‘"JN appointing a man who is not registered, the Waikato Hospital Board has broken faith with the architects of Auckland. Its action does not fill ns with confidence, for it has deliberately gone back on its own conditions of appointment, which stated that no person except a registered architect would be considered.”

r P HAT remark by a prominent Auckland architect sums up the feeling of architects in general and those who applied in particular, on the AVaikato Hospital Board’s appointment of Mr. A. McDonald, of Hamilton, to fill the place of Mr. J. W. Warren as its architect. There is strong resentment against the action of the board. Mr. McDonald, according to the secretary of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, is not a registered architect, and the conditions of application, clause 2, circulated on May 21 last, state: Applications from registered architects only will be considered. Through the Auckland branch, • the New Zealand Institute of Architects is taking up the question, and its executive will consider the appointment very soon. The Auckland branch may hold a special meeting also, for its ordinary meeting will not take place for some time yet. It has been pointed out that lately there have been several similar cases, and that a stop should be put to this sort of thing. For the position there were IS applications from all over New Zealand, including at least six Auckland firms.

The board dealt, with these, and its j decision was known in at 2.30 p.m. yesterday. Architects object to their applications being treated with such scant courtesy, lor they contained many pages of typescript. “We have no grudge against Mr. McDonald personally,” said one applicant, “but we consider that the board has not honoured its conditions. We have not been treated fairly at all.” “If the board has appointed an unregistered man,” said Mr. C. Reginald Ford, “in the first place, it is a breach of faith, because of the hoards expressed conditions. It is a point. of professional etiquette and honour with architects net to compete with unregistered men. “Secondly, as the registration regulations have been in force for some years, and were introduced by the Government to ensure that only properly trained men should practise, it is wrong for a public body administering public funds to employ an unregistered man. “In any event, an is due from the board as to its appointing an unknown man when several leading firms with the highest English and colonial qualifications and established records of work have applied. “Public bodies owe it to the j public, whose servants they are, j to exercise the same care in making appointments as a responsible business man would.” “I think that it is very regrettable,” said Professor C. R. Knight, who occupies the chair of Architecture at Auckland University College, “that a ! man should be appointed who is not j a member of the Institute of Arehij tects. I intend no criticism of Mr. McDonald, for I know nothing of him ! or his qualifications, but if he is not j registered it is pertinent to ask what I qualifications he lias. “If the board stated in its conditions that only registered men .would be considered, it has definitely flouted those conditions, and we architects as a whole have now no confidence in it.” One architect whose firms was interested said the board could not possibly have given proper consideration to the applications in the time taken. The usual statements in such a case would cover at least twenty typej written pages, in which important j professional credentials and affirma- | tions of experience would be set out. i If the board ran through IS such apj plications in a-couple of hours it was I obviously not giving them the atten- : tion their importance warranted.