With something like reckless abandon the building of New Zealand homes, shops and offices have borrowed liberally from every nation, adapting and adopting a bit here and a bit there in the belief that building in this way is expressive of one of our most vaunted national characteristics—individuality. Perhaps, after all, it is—and perhaps our national style of building at one time really was a sort of architectural cross-word puzzle. That this is less likely to be so today than say 20 or 30 years ago, is due largely to there having arisen a new generation of architects who are prepared to take their interest seriously as an art. And as an art, architecture is a combination of the art of living, and the art of compromise. For when all is said and done, part of the raw materials with which an architect must work is the customer—the people whom he has to see in terms of being housed in his structure, and who, moreover, must be able to see themselves in that way, in that place. 2. The Maori in Contemporary Building Art

The Work of John Scott Hawkes Bay Architect by Louis Johnson Among those younger-generation architects whose work is attracting considerable attention—and who should prove of special interest to readers of Te Ao Hou—is John Scott, the centre of whose activities is Hastings, though his work is moving farther afield. John Scott, of part-Maori extraction, lives at Te Awanga near Hastings, and his work includes, besides family houses, schools, churches and plans for an ambitious Maori Community Centre for Palmerston North. Mr Scott was educated in Hastings schools and his first job, after leaving school, was shepherding on a Hawke's Bay farm. He was for six months in the R.A.F. and after being demobilised became a student at the School of Architecture at Auckland University which he attended from 1946 to 1950. Following this, to gain experience, he went building with a group of fellow students. They were fired with the idea that they could build factories more cheaply than anyone else. They did. And their loss was terrific. (“It's taken years to pay it back,” said Mr Scott ruefully.) For a while he was a member of Group Architects in Auckland, and finally, some six years ago, set up in his own practice in Hawke's Bay. “How would you describe the aim of your work?” I asked him. Mr Scott's reply was prompt and practical: “To give the most for the money.” Pictures are more eloquent than words in describing how much that “most of the money” means, and on these pages, are a number of examples of Mr Scott's work, most of which I have been fortunate enough to inspect. They range from highly individualised homes put up on very low budgets, to some of the most striking and admired schools in the district.