Future Design For Buildings is Startling

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 723, 24 July 1929, Page 14

Future Design For Buildings is Startling

Arch i tect Exp la ins Likely Eventualities FACTORY AND SHOP “The Architecture of the Future” "'as the subject of au interesting address tiy Mr. Howard M. Robertson, F.R.1.8.A., before the British Architecture Association recently. City roofs in the future would probably be flat, said the lecturer. Once the smoke nuisance was abolished they would be pleasant places of resort. The shops would be there, and people would stroll about, or perambulate in electric chairs, shopping and amusing themselves. As to materials, the lecturer spoke of steel, glass, concrete and copper as being used now and likely to be used in the future. The tendency was to reduce masonry to a very small proportion. It was rather absurd to hang such heavy materials as brick and masonry on to a light steel framework, and it was only done because we were adapting the construction of hundreds of years ago as a skin for a modern steel building. The speaker thought that in future the structure would be encased in sheets of metal or of some composite material made in a factory, cut to size and brought on to the job, where they would morely have to be hung on. Or the principle ot the cement gun might be applied, lu this case one would put up the frame-work, cover with lattice, and a man would come along with a gun and squirt on some kind of waterproof material. The factory of the future might have its exterior entirely of glass, wind bracing being used where necessary to keep such very light structure in position. It might be asked how such a building should be heated. But it was possible it might be built on a principle like that of the vacuum flask, with double walls and a vacuum between. Coming to town-planning, the lecturer said that in the good old days, 300 or -100 years ago, things were architecturally in their proper place. The church stood in the middle of the town, dominating it, and nobody thought of building higher than the church. What was important municipally and ecclesiastically had importance in its architecture, but there pame a time when the princes of commerce came on the scene, and nobody was going to stop making money because there was a church in the neighbourhood. Gradually the city developed into a kind of rivalry of buildings of all sorts, each trying to be taller than the others. Showing slides of a house designed by a famous French architect, the speaker said that the French were producing houses with an orderly arrangement of the rooms, and where there was plenty of light aud air. The house shown was eminently functional, designed to satisfy all the requirements people most felt in every day life. It was almost continuously surrounded by windows. This was made possible by designing the framework of the house inside and hanging the floors out on cantilevers. The wiudows were neither sashes nor casements, but all slid sideways. They could be pushed all up together, leaving practically the whole side of the house open.