ARCHITECTURE CONTRASTS

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20426, 17 February 1938, Page 6

ARCHITECTURE CONTRASTS

DUTCH, GERMAN, SCANDINAVIAN A TRAVELLER’S OBSERVATIONS In his recent travels through Europe Mr Don G. Ward, holder of the Haddon Travelling Scholarship of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, was naturally very interested in the buildings of various countries. Here are some of his observations, published in the Journal of the Institute— There i> something refreshingly clear and logical about the architecture of Dutch towns, whether old or new. They have the finest bricks and ceramics in the world, and they make Hie most of those delightful materials. They are up lo all sorts of tricks with bricks, and their spontaneous use of coloured tiles is based on a traditional use of colourful materials. The old cottages are built of mellow brickwork. or rendered in cream, and doors and windows are sky-blue or lemonyellow. and cornices are white. De Klock's housing in Amsterdam crystallises the gay abandon of post-war Dutch design: Hie maize-cob towers and Dm pattern-brickwork houses, with roofs like oi.l hats, could have stepped out of ‘Mans Andersen.' “1 am beginning in think that the first line careless rapture of the postwar years in architecture is a spent force. The Germans, although great experimentalists, have long since passed Ibis stage, and settled down to the simple, plain and unexciting forms of ihe newest buildings in Berlin and oilier large German cities. This is particularly noticeable in the great building of the Air Ministry in Berlin, and tlie more recent banks and other buildings of this class. The general impression is one of stark, sombre heaviness, due perhaps to the universal grey stone facing, absence of detail, and harsh, beak-like profiles. Housing, too, lias been whittled down to the bare essentials, although it never was over-playful. The pitched roof has returned to favour with the garden city arrangement, where every able-bodied citizen is encouraged to learn the art of vegetable cultivation in between periods of military service. Influence of Earlier Forms “In assessing the value of Scandinavian work one must appreciate the influence of the earlier national forms. The new work here is extraordinarily clever, but, except in isolated instances, it is a natural development of the older style, and the use in a different way of the old and the introduction of new materials. Coloured glass, bright metals, sheet iron and corrugated iron—a very popular material in the Anlipodes. 1 think — are used in novel and interesting ways. Colour, whether it be canvas blinds, painted ironwork and woodwork, or a profusion of flowers, particularly in blocks of flats, is paramount everywhere. At the Paris Exposition, and that at Brussels two years ago. the pavilions of the Scandinavian countries were unsurpassed, and I believe that the lamp of progress has passed