BUILDING A NEW LONDON

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21971, 24 May 1941, Page 5

BUILDING A NEW LONDON

American Architect’s Dream Space And Happiness After The War Bombs have destroyed the slums and ugliness of London and the American architect. Frank Lloyd Wright, has envisaged the new city that will rise from the rums of the old. "The greatest creature of habit’ on earth is London. The slums and ugliness that would have taken centuries to overcome have been blasted out of the way in a few days. And while sentiment is entitled to its tears, the art and science of human habitation may get a break,” says Mr Wright in “The Sydney Morning Herald.”

"If English-speaking culture, by way of grit and the will of Englshmen, takes the break, goes ahead and builds in line with this age of mechanical power, the Empire may die, but English domination will survive to triumph.” One of the world’s greatest architects, Frank Lloyd Wright is 70 years of age. His best-known building is the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, in which he first made use of the cantilever principle. Each concrete floor slab rests on a central support, like a teatray on a waiter’s fingers. The 1923 earthquake destroyed almost every modern building in Tokyo, but the Imperial Hotel stood undisturbed. “Power so capable to destroy is just as capable to create, as we shall soon see. And we shall soon see whether England is humanitarian or only English, and see whether Germany is humanitarian or only Germanic,” continues the distinguished architect. “If England is humanitarian London will decentralise now. The bomb over-

head points to that as a necessity. London reintegrated should, be 25 times the area of old London. The new space-scale of our mechanical age is just about that—2s feet now to one foot then. "Human congestion is murdermurder if not of the carcase then murder of the most desirable human sensibilities. There is room and a crying need for the Greater London and the plan for It should be laid down, keeping in mind that Tradition, with a capital T, is infinitely greater than the manifold traditions to which it gives rise. Minor traditions must die in order that great tradition may live. Necessary Items “Great building always begins at the beginning, so the necessary items are: “1. No very rich nor very poor to build for—no gold2. No idle ( land except for common landscape—no real estate exploiters. 3. No holding against society of the ideas by way of which society lives—no patents. "In short, no speculation in money, land, or ideas, not one of them must •be any longer regarded as a speculative commodity, but must be used as the actual necessities of human life, like air and water. This is the true basis for what we could honestly call Democracy. It is a necessary basis upon which, to build a city of the mechanical age that will take the place of the feudal monster now being destroyed. This liberation of the human individuality is not so terrible a leveller of human fortunes as it may seem to be. It is the only just basis for true capitalism, the life of human initiative. Base capital broad upon the ground, not with apex on the ground, base in the air. Except for the disabled, unemployment of any kind would be unthinkable in a State so founded. England could be that State, and would be for ever impregnable. “The physical body of the democratic city of to-day would have no one centre, but would have many centres all well correlated, the height of the buildings increasing as the perimeter of activity was approached. “Were Old London to fairly accommodate partial motorisation it already had 8.8. (Before the Bombs), there could be no building at all in London. And London motorisation had just begun. “London should be a motor car, aeroplane London, the spacing all laid out upon a new scale of human movement set by . car and plane. "But the sentimentality of our elders blocks the-path of true progress and continually begs for compromise. Make none. Make none whatever, because all the vision we have is not enough to prevent such sentimentality from catching up and holding us back again. Keep this static out, and keep the traffic centres all wide open. Historic London could be featured in a great central London park system. Conduct power from the mines. Do not cramp industrial areas around piles of ravz material or fuel with the usual deadly dull colllateral “housing” by Goveriiment. Abolish the back and forth haul of people, fuel and supplies. Do

not be afraid now to build factories and farms as the fit associates for country homes and schools, churches, theatres, and parks. “It is easy to do this with fluid nower and integral architecture and to secure noble results. The necessity for the old pigeonholes and severe segregations of the horse-and-buggy past belong back there now with the manure pile and the horse-and-buggy mind. A new kind of beauty has come back to life, a beauty that is integrity. We can plan for an integral life. “Integral building is a necessity to democratic culture. It is not a mere phrase. We are building it a little here and there, in spite of the code of interference and waste. It is international now, but it spoke English first, and can save England from bombs for ever, because the pressures that made war inevitable cannot exist in a Democracy so planned. The dictators would be out of luck. “There should be no traffic problem. That has been solved in Broadacre City. Make broad streets concave Instead of convex, with underpasses for foot passengers. Provide top-turn-left intersections for traffic, and over and underpasses for the criss-cross. No traffic lights because roads themselves would be low-lighted ribbons. For all this the likelihood of accidents is reduced to about one-tenth of one per cent. And away with poles and wires for ever. True Harmony “Along with honestly free speech goes honestly free life for the individual, his own ground, his own house, ail his own way, yet in no man’s way. No, not Utopia, just a way of building from a good modern plan for democratic people. That’s all. "What luxury and pagan beauty the Greeks knew, or medieval Christianity knew, can be made to seem and be merely an exterior thing, like some stage setting. There need be no difference in quality of thought or structure between the house of a man with more and the house of a man with less; only difference in extent. “All may harmonise. Individuality could inform and enliven all private homes to-morrow without mutual detriment if architecture could live again, even if it must live again because of bombs in irresponsible hands. Maybe it could yet only live because of bombs. Who knows? “The home is the real citadel of the human race in any democracy, and where and while the private home has Integrity I bespeak for it. There will be no war. Railway arterials should be elevated with continuous storage space beneath the tracks; lorry traffic should be set low on each side so that lorries may be free to take on or take off anywhere. All traffic should be fluid and undated. Yes: it can be done. Such grandomania as survives the bomb should expend itself oy extensions parallel with the groundgoing up into the air only as activity thins out. Old building codes should be thrown away. New ones, simplified and broadened in keeping with the opportunities of the new age, should be written.

“It is no use blinking the fact that mechanics have outrun the philosophy, the social and aesthetic forms, and the ideas of our would-be saviours of yesterday. Why use their rules for laws? ‘lf we are on the side of nature we are never lawless.’ ”