POPULAR WORD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 217, 12 September 1940, Page 11

POPULAR WORD.

MEANING OF "PRACTICAL" AN ARCHITECT'S COMMENT. A former president of the New Zealand Institute of Architects has made some terse remarks on the word "practical" in relation to designs of buildings. "We have a growing and exacting public demand for the knowledge and efficiency of the architect; on the other hand we see a very large amount of work going to those untrained for the purpose,", he said. "My answer is: Get on with the job, •be it a small one or a big one, and make it a successful pie.ee of work. Combine imagination with technical efficiency. Prove ourselves and do not worry about others; they, important as they are, are but links in a chain, and one link cannot make a chain. They can never win a large and abiding share of our work (if we do it properly) until they are able to do all of our job. "In the meantime, collaborate with them, use them, respecting each his special technical equipment, ae part of that co-ordination of the processes of building which is our particular work. Remember that as co-ordinators—plan-ners—we have it in us to be the ideal practical man. "It was an architect who was responsible for both the simple directness of the plans and attractive appearance of the new London tube stations; it was an architect, and a young man at that, who planned the Mersey Tunnel approaches and power houses; architects designed the Battersea Power Station and the new bridges over the Thames. "Let ue be confident in knowledge of the fact that when we plan efficiently we not only build better, but we build cheaper than the so-called 'practical' man. The plan of the latter may look cheaper—that is one of the characteristics of architectural illiteracy—but such appearance is generally more than belied by the expense involved in the lack of directness and simplicity of the plan. Through plan, through structural processes, co-ordination in'a building has its fulfilment in the internal and external character it assumes, and in the extent to which this favourably excites the emotions."