THE NEW BUILDING ERA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 127, 31 May 1937, Page 6

THE NEW BUILDING ERA

IDEALS OF ARCHITECTS. "Public opinion will not tolerate narrow self-interest in communities or individuals," remarked Mr. Percy Thomas, president ot the Royal Institute of British Architects, in an address on the new building era. "It is on the technical ability of architects that the success or otherwise of rebuilding our towns and cities will depend. That the aggregate skill of the architectural profession is increasing rapidly there is no doubt, but we must not be content with present standards. We exist solely to serve the community and we must bend our utmost powers to that end.” In quoting that statement at a recent meeting of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, Mr. W. Gray Young remarked; — "I think we all agree that the community does not take advantage of our training as planners. One of the needs of to-day is for skilled planning and no other profession is trained in this department in the way an architect is. Mr. Charles Marriott, the eminent critic, has put the matter very well when he says: ’Far from being regarded as the man who puts on the ‘pretties,’ the architect should be regarded as the person who decides the layout, plan, scale and proportions of the social fabric, and the relation ot one of its parts to another, in so far as the social fabric is material and visible. In deciding these questions he is guided by a sense of form and order which has been properly trained.’ He goes so far as to say that the place of the architect in the community in its material aspect is that of the Divinity who shapes our ends. "We have to introduce order, proportion and beauty into the social fabric,” continued Mr. Young. "We are trained in the planning of roads and open spaces, buildings of all types, from public buildings to telephone boxes, the setting on the sites and tn relation to adjoining structures, the furnishings and fixtures—truly a wide field. Architects have a tremendous opportunity in front of them if they are only given that opportunity. We are members of a profession which is not only fascinaing in its responsibilities, and it has that stimulus derived from creative effort which makes it a pleasure rather than a labour."