N.Z. BUILDINGS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 248, 11 December 1940, Page 3

N.Z. BUILDINGS

INTERESTING REMINDERS

SOME UGLY LEGACIES In a centennial survey of buildings in New Zealand Mr Paul Pascoe gives a reminder of some ug 1 y legacies. The Victorian tradition of the 1840 settlers was expressed in their first public buildings, iie writes. But the tradition itself lacked unity, since it combined those opposites, tho Gothic of the romantic revival led by Pugiri and Ruskin, and the plainer classical style which had contributed .so much to ISth century and Rcgcncy England. Gothic copied the pointed arch of the medieval church and cloister. The classical . style, revived at the time of the Renaissance, was derived through Rome from the massive, manypillared temples of the ancient Greeks. It was full of weight and dignity, and relied on the justness, of proportions for its effect. Later in the Victorian period the formless drift of the architecture of the day in England was all top faithfully reflected in Now Zealand buildings. A few New Zealand archi teets, influenced by the enlightened ideas of William Morris and his group, produced buildings that compared well with their models. But the individualism that allows every building in a street to have its own dissenting style was even more acute in New Zealand than overseas. This gave to our towns the amazing contrasts of dignity and ostentation, of style and trash, of restraint and ornament, which mar tiie individual achievement of a single good buildinu. It is this confusion of standards which makes New Zealand even more than contemporary England, aesthetically un sat is f y Ing, asp cci ally as there is the added contrast of buildings in variously painted wood and in stone, brick and concreteBut to-day New Zealanders are aware of new standards in arehitecture and they are shedding their dislike to put up buildings which arc clearly functional. But biii! flings are so permanent that it Avill be many years before tho streets of the larger towns achieve any real unity.