COPYING ANCIENTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 956, 26 April 1930, Page 32

COPYING ANCIENTS

ARCHITECTURAL FAILURES COPYIST AND PARADIST It is not a difficult work to copy the planning, design, or ornamental details of any of the ancient architectural styles. An appreciative architect can convey in his new creation the spirit of the period he is weaving into his design. The Aztec Hotel in Monravia, California, was designed for sentimental reasons to convey the spirit of the Mayas, and the main cornice, while having nothing in common with the original deails of Aztec architecture, still conveys, even to the lay mind, the spirit of the arcnitecture of the original occupiers of Mexico. Mr. Stacey-Judd is the first architect to our knowledge to attempt to adapt the principles of the architecture &C the Mayas to modern structures, and this building is the direct result of these pioneer efforts. The Chinese Y.M.C.A. building in San Francisco is modern in all its aspects, but here again the architects, Messrs. Meyer and Johnson, have given a definite Chinese expression to the building. The trouble about all such architectural gymnastics is that the buildings are not in the traditional architectural spirit which could be supposed reasonably to represent the ideals and ideas lying behind the provision and accommodation in the structures referred to.

For instance, a Y.M.C.A. building in Chinese style appears to be a contradiction in terms, for Chinese architecture in its essence can hardly have anything in common with the Y.M.C.A. movement. Perhaps there is even less connection between Aztec architecture and modern hotel accommodation. The resultant buildings are necessarily freaks produced, no doubt, by scholarly architects, but having no special significance since they are not reasonable attempts to either imitate or carry on an architectural method of building suited to the needs of which such buildings are supposed to be the reflections.

The copyist, however much he may display his ability, is only a parodist and loses both the spirit of the original composition which he affects to copy and the spirit of the times in which he lives—a time to which he must perforce give expression to the best of his ability. It is not too much to say that all efforts to revive ancient modes of architectural expression were doomed to failure, and have indeed failed, because the designers were bound by the trapping of a dead past to which they were unable to infuse the spirit of their times. Perhaps they were not permitted to do so by those who employed them, but the results have never been other than disappointing.