THE PERGOLA.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144051, 22 March 1913, Page 5

THE PERGOLA.

FOR SUMMER WEATHER-. In an article dealing with the best means of providing for coolness in summer the Sydney Sun makes the following remarks, most of which apply equally well to our clim.ate: — The sharp change which took place in the climate of Sydney in the last few days makes, it evident that a special kind of architecture is wanted to make homes comfortable. In the - hot weather of a week ago people longed for houses that were all verandah; now that the cold snap has come people want houses that are mostly fire-places. Unfortunately we have copied the designs for our houses from English plans, and tho result is that our houses are mostly unsuited to our climate. Sydney has, roughly, eight months of summer and four of winter, but there is no regularity in the seasons. A hot day may easily close bitterly cold, and an ideal house would make provision for comfort in cither extreme. Formerly the idea was that a verandah running all round a house was the most suitable feature of a Sydney home, but the usefulness of tho verandah has been over-rated. On warm summer evenings it is much more pleasant to sit in tho open than under a verandah roof, while i)i winter the same roof prevents tho sunlight coming into the rooms, particularly on the southern side of houses. The greatest use of the verandah has been found only recently with the advent of open-air sleeping. The night dews make sleeping in tho ppen inadvisable, and some shelter is necessary.

The ideal home would, therefore, be so constructed as to preserve the usefulness of the verandah as a sleepingplace, and to eliminate its objection as an obstruction of the sunlight. The Americans have solved the problem with the “sun-room” and the “pergola.” A verandah is really an ugly feature of a house. The first verandah was, no doubt, an after-thought. Someone put a shed up alongside bis bouse, -and found it was useful, so people have been putting up the same kind of sheds ever since. Unless designed with great taste a verandah never looks to be part of the bouse, but an excrescence or appendix. American home-builders now incorporate the verandah in the house itself-r-that is, they build tho verandah into tile house instead of tacking it on to the side.

The “sun-room,” as it is called, usually occupies a corner of the house with a sunny aspect. It is thus enclosed with walls on two sides, and is open on the others which are protected from the rain by strong canvas blinds. The “sun-room” is furnished with chairs, lounges, tables, and rugs, and is used as a sitting and breakfast room. Similar rooms are built in other parts of the bouse to serve as bedrooms.

The “pergola” is partly verandah and partly trellis. It might be described as a verandah with the roof off. The uprights and crosspieces may lie of squared and planed timber, carefully fitted together and painted, or they may be of rough timber. An excellent rustic effect may be obtained by using saplings just 'as they come from the bush with the bark on. The posts' are about six inches in diameter and straight, but the cross-pieces may be thinner and slightly crooked. . A Californian millionaire lias. built a massive pergola at bis country house. The posts are redwood tree trunks two, feet thick, and, at a little distance the corrugations in the bark give the posts the appearance of rugged, fluted columns. In Australia stringy-bark tree trunks would give the same effect.

The pergola may be built against the side of the house in the same way as a verandah, or it may be placed against the verandah, thus increasing its width. Vines, which drop their leaves in winter—grape vines and wistaria, are much favoured—are grown over the pergola. A delightful shade is thus obtained in the summer, and in winter the skeleton framework stripped of its leaves allows sunlight and warmth to pour straight into the rooms.