LOOK-IN AT OLYMPIA

Taranaki Daily News, 1 December 1934, Page 21 (Supplement)

LOOK-IN AT OLYMPIA

SOME IDEAS AT EXHIBITION. HOUSES OF SILENCE. At the opening of the Building Exhibition at Olympia, which for a fortnight in September attracted thousands of visitors to London, a master builder took the chair. It was Sir Gilbert Scott, who has done so much to beautify England, whether by the design of a cathedral or a telephone box. There has rarely been held a more encouraging exhibition,, for the longawaited turning of the tide has caused a new impetus in building and in the inventions of all kinds of improvements to the modem house. It was cheering to see so many good designs of steel-framed doors and windows, staircases, healths, and lamps. Some new flats, which will be built next year in Westminster, • were shown on a small scale. They 'will have low rents, and as they are being fitted with most of the essential furniture the furnishing will not be a serious, item. THE BUGBEAR OF NOISE. One house was built entirely, of steel, with a steel staircase; but most visitors preferred the ■ cosier-looking buildings roofed with shining sea-green or brown pantiles. The skylights of these houses are made of glass pantiles so that the symmetry is unspoiled. Fighting the bugbear of noise is producing many inventions. One of the chief attractions at Olympia was the glass silk, the beautiful new material used as an insulator. The bundles of crystalline strands, each a thousandth of an toch thick, are shot with glacier greens and greys seem ,to have been spun out of icicles; Air is one., of the best insulators, and the widely-used cork boarding contains masses of bubbles of air. There were also sound-proof bricks, .each perforated with 65 -holes, Noise penetrates them, but it .is broken in passing, and so well is- sound kept in the rooms (as well as out of them) in an experimental house which has lately been built that the wireless has had to be toned down. MUDDLED TOWN-PLANNING. New homes for old was an exhibit attracting thousands. By. means of photographs and models visitors saw for themselves the unnecessary sordidness and ugliness caused by muddled townplanning. “Susannah Row, 1829” Was the name written up on a slum alley which only two months ago was a familiar sight in

Shoreditch. It was lately taken down during a clearance, and most of the alley, except some of the brickwork, was lifted bodily and brought to the exhibition. As they peeped into the ill-lit rooms with poor furniture and looked with horror at the dark and dingy backyard crammed with rubbish and broken crockery many people exclaimed in amazment at such living conditions. It is good to know that the war on thq, slums will not end until the evil has been abolished. THE LOVELIEST THING good friendship. AT HER OLD FRIEND’S SIDE. . Helen Keller has gone back to her work in America to help those who, like herself, are blind and deaf, after a year’s holiday in Scotland. In America a University teacher is often given one year in seven as a holiday, and this is called his Sabbatical year. Helen Keller's Sabbatical year, which was in fact fifteen months, was spent in giving herself with tenderest care to helping her oldest and nearest friend. The story is one of the most touching that can be told. " Forty years ago a young governess, Miss Anne Sullivan, arrived at the Keller’s American home as a companion to an unhappy, rebellious child. She taught blind Helen to read.- She taught dumb Helen to speak. She led her from the land of darkness and solitude. The years passed but never broke the tie between them. The teacher married and became Mrs. Macy. Two years ago she went to Scotland and settled on a Highland farm near Inverness, and then upon her fell the shadow of her affliction. Her eyes, never strong, began to fail. The misfortune instantly brought Helen Keller to her side. She who had been pupil became teacher, helping her friend to master again the reading by Braille which, once learned, had become forgotten. She did more. With failing sight came illness, and for long days Helen sat by her friend’s bed, constant and affectionate, ministering to needs, giving help as well as comfort. When Mrs. Macy began to recover her health the two could not be parted. Through spring and summer they walked hand in hand in the fields about the farm. The Sabbatical year is over. Helen Keller, who is blind and deaf, but a brilliant author and organiser, has gone back to the work which she has made her own, and to others who need her in America.