ARCHITECTS WANT TO DESIGN SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18000, 10 November 1926, Page 14

ARCHITECTS WANT TO DESIGN SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS.

DEPUTATION WAITS ON TWO MINISTERS. Per Press Association. 'WELLINGTON, November 9. A request that all education and hospital boards should be left perfectly free to employ any fully aualified architect to design and supervise their works was the main representation of a deputation from the council of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, which waited on' the Minister of Education and the Minister of Health to* day. The president of the institute, Mr S Hurst Seager, said they wished to bring under the Ministers’ notice an injustice they considered being done to private practitioners in preventing them undertaking commissions for the erection of school buildings. Hospital boards also were not encouraged to place their work with private architects, having been advised that it was to their interest to allow their work to be done by the architectural branch of the Public Works Department. “We cannot admit this,” said Mr Seager, “for all works can be designed and carried out by fully qualified private practitioners iri every way as well and economically as by the Public Works Department. We submit that it would be in the best interests of the Government architectural works that architects in private practice should be employed as far as possible in designing them.” . Referring to the large number of young architects who were taking their courses abroad and gaining experience, Mr Seager it would be a great loss to the Dominion if no professional inducement was offered to them on their return to the Dominion. He asked that education and hospital boards should be left free to employ qualified architects.

Mr S. W. Fearn said that the excellence of the modem school and hospital plan was due almost wholly to arcliitectural competition. If private architects were excluded, the Government would lose the benefit of competition. He submitted that architects were all taxpayers, and that it did not seem just for them to be compelled to contribute to the upkeep of Government Departments which, to a very large extent, threatened their means of livelihood.

Replying to the deputation, the Minister of Education, the Hon R. A. Wright, said there was a controversy as to whether private architects could carry out the work as cheaply as the Department. His Department still maintained that the work was done at a cost of about 1 per cent since the Public Works Department had carried out the majority of secondary school work for the Department. Since 1923-24 the cost of the preparation of plans and specifications, etc., had been carefully kept by the Government architect, and in no case had it exceeded 1 per cent. This did not include supervision charges, but it in eluded overhead charges. The Minister said that the Department had something in the nature of a grievance against some architects who had supervised the erection of school buildings, and he went on to instance a number of cases where the Department had been faced with the heavy cost of repairs and renewals owing to what he alleged was faulty supervision. The Minister of Health, the Hon J A. Young, said it was not the policy of his Department to interfere with the hospital boards, but, as it was responsible for at least half the expenditure of the boards, it had to see that abuses did not creep in and that ex travagant institutions were not erected. The Department’s policy had always been to assist the boards and architects. There were experts in the Government Architect’s office who were not to be excelled in the Dominion. If the Department furnished the brains for the preparation of hospital buildings, the boards should have the benefit of it. There was something wrong with the commission system. It was like a land agent, the more of the price that was paid up, the more he got in commission. Mr Young suggested that the institute might consider whether spme remedy could not be found for that- where large contracts were concerned. If it could do so, perhaps the Government might change its policy in regard to hospital and education buildings.