PLEASING TRIBUTE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21379, 23 June 1939, Page 10

PLEASING TRIBUTE

IMPROVEMENT IN ARCHITECTURE A very pleasant tribute to the architectural profession in England was paid by Lord Maugham, Lord High Chancellor, at the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of British Architects. “Bacon, as perhaps you know, wrote an essay on building, and perhaps yon would like to hear what his idea was as to a house,” he said. “He wrote this: ‘Houses are built to live in and not to look on.’ I see some heads shaken at that. He went on: ‘Leave the goodly fabrics of houses for beauty only to io enchanted palaces of the poets, who build them with small cost.’ He then went on to describe a house which, it you read the description carefully, would be, I should think, a house costing £lOO,OOO in our present money, and you may think that you would like to be the architect of it. I doubt very much, however, whether you would enjoy that position, because I may tell you at once that there was no subject that my predecessor did not conceive that he knew more about than anybody else. Judging from his record, I should think you would have had very great difficulty, moreover, in collecting you: fee. “I want to say as a layman and not as a Lord Chancellor that I doubt whether there is any other art carried on in this country in which there has been so much improvement since the days of my youth. When I first remember London nearly all the modern buildings were of a most distressingcharacter. You have only to look at the pages of old architectural papers of something over fifty years ago to be absolutely astounded at the kind of buildings which were being erected at that time by architects of eminence. “There was a time not so very long ago when, if you wanted to see a really good block of flats or workmen’s buildings, or any other structure of that kind, it was necessary to go to Vienna or Stockholm, or some other continental city. That is no longer true. The buildings of that kind in London, Loverpool and some other places today are just as good and just as fine as anything that can be seen on the continent of Europe. I say that from my heart, as representing the view of somebody who, whether he is a.i ignorant man or not, has at any rate tried his best to look at tilings as he sees them, and to express an absolutely honest opinion.”