TUDOR NOW

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 837, 4 December 1929, Page 14

TUDOR NOW

Building on English Countryside CHANGES DEPLORED The builders are giving their finishing touch to the new inn at the edge ot the village green. It was a mellow unpretentious 18th century inn before they pulled it down. In its place we have a typical example of resuscitated Tudor; halftimbered studiously “quaint,” inadequately windowed, and a complete sham. At the rear is, of course, an “old world” garden, and I should not be the least surprised if you were to find in it a few of the dilapidated gargoyles which H.M. Office of Works recently sold by auction. We now have three Tudor inns, and all were erected in the present century (write Philip Macer-Wright, in the London “Daily Chronicle”). The only genuine old inn remaining—knocked about somewhat, it is true, and adapted to modern requirements is a very prosaic affair compared with our latest essay in the pseudoantique.

Which will give greater pleasure to our visitors—the shabby but authentic Georgian, or the spruce but masquerading Elizabethan? The latter, probably, for as supply inevitably follows demand, I assume that the revival of Tudor architecture is popular. Are not the main motor roads peppered with half-timbered filling-stations, Ye Olde Tudor Tearooms, and quaint “old” inns that have “old world” tea gardens at their rear?

A century or so ago the rage was for Gothic. Stucco battlements arose, to clinch the assertion that a man’s home was his castle. Just as nowadays the architectural sentimentalists and romantics will substitute Elizabethan for Georgian, so in those days they were never happier than when they were masking Tudor with Gothic. Today we put ourselves to the most laborious effort to transform Gothic back to Tudor. Of the length to which we will go, the recent restoration of Lincoln's Inn Hall stands witness. Off came the early 18th century stucco—several feet deep it was—down tumbled the battlements, away went roof and walls, and for a time there remained little more than an empty space, girt with scaffold poles, and covered with tarpaulin. Now the hall is securely Tudor again, and all is well.

It .is a nice point whether some of these heroic restorations do in fact endow us with relics more valuable than those which they displace, or, indeed, are really much more convincing than the anachronistic tom-foolery which is making a laughing-stock of the English countryside. The Best of Both What we are seeing is, I imagine, an attempt to enjoy the best of both worlds. On the one hand wo will not hesitate to pull down an entire street of ancient houses to make room for an austere block of towering ferroconcrete, or to remove a dangerous corner, or widen a motoring road; on the other, we passionately desire to preserve the traditional beauty and charm of the pre-machine age. Hence the romantic Gloriana flourish. Hence the spurious aesthetic standards, gimcrack gables, and flummery, bottle windows, and open hearths piled with sham logs that glow electrically. Here and there can still be found Gothic railway stations, and I infinitely prefer them tp Tudor garages. CIRCULAR HOUSE BY DANISH ARCHITECTS EXHIBIT AT COPENHAGEN A full-sized model of a wholly new type of house, “designed without regard to popular prejudices,” was one of the novel features at the House and Building Exhibition recently opened in the Forum, Copenhagen. This model is the result of an open competition arranged last year by the Academic Arcitects’ Union, which was won by two young Danish architects, Arne Jacobson and Fleming Lassen. The house is circular in form, with a flat prismatic glass roof. The entrance corridor leads to a central hall, from which the other rooms open, following the course of the sun according to the use for which the rooms are intended. Thus the bedrooms and gymnastic rooms turn toward the east, and the parlour or general living rooms toward the south. On entering the corridor one steps on a perforated rubber mat. the pressure starting an electrically operated vacuum underneath which removes dust from the boots. These are some of the other novel features:— Beds, which are supplied with rubber air mattresses, are let into alcoves, and a radio apparatus is fitted into a niche alongside each; In the parlour is a glass-top table on steel legs, the top so adjusted that ir will revolve and bring to hand anything lying on the opposite side. This room is equipped with magnavox and television apparatus. Alongside is a suction tube connected with the local post office for reception and dispatch of letters. A circular overroom in the centre of the roof, reached by an elevator, provides sleeping accommodation for the children, and gives them direct access to the roof games. On the top of this overroom there stands a helicopter, provided with suction feet to hold it fast in case of a storm. Antennae over the roof pick up electric energy transmitted wirelessly for the lighting and heating of the house, also for every sort of auxiliary service.