The Dominion. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1919. GOOD PLANNING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 95, 16 January 1919, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1919. GOOD PLANNING

So much that is defective in our communal environment is due to bad planning or to a shortsighted failure to make good plans beforehand that it should be hardly necessary to emphasise the wisdom of making the most of the" services of those whose special mission in life it is to plan and direct, and who are trained and educated to carry out that mission' efficiently. Amongst the members of the community who stand within this category architects have or should have an important place. Under modern conditions they arc not only concerned as a profession with planning buildings and supervising their construction, but are particularly well qualified to influence the development and extension of towns and cities in conformity with aesthetic principles and those of real utility, and to prompt and guide the desire for an improvement of urban areas in the laying out of which these principles have been more or less completely ignored. Most architects nowadays are keenly interested in town-planning as well as in the planning of individual buildings and structures . and the possible scope _ of_ their future activities in beautifying our cities and towns and making them more worthy than they are of a democracy having some claims to consider itself enlightened and progressive is widened accordingly. No one can bo unaware that the architect and town-planner, given a free hand, would find almost unlimited work to , do in this country. Favoured as they are by Nature in their setting and surroundings, our centres of population are remarkable for the examples they afford of wasted and neglected opportunities where architecture and beautification are concerned and the prevalence of a crude utilitarianism which in its visible results sorely offends the eye. Kapid growth over-a limited period accounts in part for these conditions. On an average our towns and cities certainly compare badly by artistic and other standards with the provincial centres of the United Kingdom, even when allowance is made for features that could not bo reproduced in a new country. But there is no doubt that a temperamental disregard for and neglect of the graces of life is largely responsible for our manifest shortcomings in architecture and town-planning. '• A stage has been reached at which there is..some prospect of better standards being set up in these matters. The recent epidemic in several respects taught the community a sharp lesson, and incidentally it ■was clearly demonstrated that in Wellington, Auckland, and some other parts of the" .Dominion a pro-. portion of the people arc housed under conditions' which call urgently for amendment. Of late, also, something like the attention it demands has been given to the fact that many of our school buildings are quite unworthy of the purpose to which they are devoted.. Few New Zealanders will be inclined to quarrel with the statement of a visiting Canadian teacher that he is grievously disappointed at what ho has seen of the school buildings and school equipment of the Dominion after hearing so much about its progressive character. . In all such questions) as in the broad question of improved town-planning, architects are, of course, intimately'concerned, and it is to bo hoped that the members of the Now Zealand Institute of Architects, who'are now holding their annual conference in Wellington, will not disperse without giving a definite lead to public, opinion and stimulating such tendencies to reform as are now in evidence. Architects no doubt will be ready enough to recognise that they have an active part to play in the period of reconstruction and development which is in prospect. In welcoming delegates to the conference yesterday, the Mayor laid no .more than just emphasis upon the extent to which municipal authorities are dependent upon the.advice land assistance ' of architects. What he had to say on this point amounted simply to a sensible recognition that in dealing with the problem of congested residential areas and others the haphazard methods hitherto followed will no longer serve. . The same is emphatically true in regard to schools. Good planning in each case is the first essential, and it will bear fruit' in better and more convenient as well as more beautiful houses and schools. _ The task of improving school buildings is one upon which' architects should be very willing t<v concentrate their talents. It is in the schools, if anywhere, that we must look for a development of the sense of beauty in which as a community we are markedly deficient, and obviously little will be accomplished in this direction while many school buildings are ugly and repellent in external and internal aspect.