Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 28 March 1933, Page 4

The place the individual student intended to fill in the life of the comjmutnity was the important function of his individuality, said Sir Raymond Unwin in addressing students of architecture. The end to be kept in view was not isolated distinction, much less drab monotony of average units, but harmonious design, combination to distinguished units. Individual design should contribute distinction and harmony to the scene, the street or the town—the highest function of individuality. The student should realise that a building from his design should confer merit in the market-place rather than attract undue attention by its singularity. It should enhance the beauty of the whole; it must have the kind of distinction that would be enhanced by its relations and would enhance theirs. Students should seek to understand 'and to sympathise with the age in which they live, and they should realise that age:; had gone Wore and others would come after. The ■ should rot lightly espouse partisanship by ranging themsevle; too dec’drdly as modernists or traditionalists. They could not wisclv ignore tradition without the scholarship to !r>o\v and a''-'roe n't" it, and iornoranee wan, no justifienUon for belittlin '' it. Nor could they justly despise modernism until they had taken the trouble to understand it. They should cultivate the power to

realise the life they intended to clothe with a building, the appearance the building would present, tiic feeling it would inspire, the e.-.pre-don tiie architect wanted to put into it, and who it would fit into the whole picture. It was more essential to real culture to recent a vulgar design than a soiit infinite.