SITES AND HOUSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 August 1940, Page 2

SITES AND HOUSES

NEED FOR CORRELATION. Some leading members of the architectural profession in Great Britain and America disagree emphatically that the matter of low-cost housing can be settled satisfactorily by the assembling of mass-produced units from factories. “Buildings are made, like fabricated articles, from a design,” comments Mr Howard Robertson, vice-president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. “But in the vast majority of cases, the design is not repeated in indefinite quantities. Even if it were, there are external conditions which affect it fundamentally, notably those related to siting and availability of materials and labour. The question of site affects building so profoundly that it is practically true to say that every building problem is different, and demands solutions in which technique must remain always fluid and always resourceful. In building, the applicability of the stereotyped solution is the exception, for the repetitions of units in large schemes does not affect the fact that the schemes themselves can seldom be duplicated as readymade solutions. “Each building problem requires, then, the drawing up of a preliminary and individual plan of campaign. As elements in this plan may be incorporated usages and methods already utilised and proved; these aie the technical stock in trade, to be selected according to their suitability. Bm the general conception, with the rarest exceptions, must be conditioned exclusively by the problem. 1 "In the formation of this conception, I it is traditional that the architect plays I the leading role. He is the planner i and designer. His whole training and experience is, or should be, directed towards the adequate and, il possible, inspired—solutions of building problems. .... ~ "Conceiving his solution he is inevitably affected by economic limitations. And here, apart from his own experience, he can draw upon the skill of his quantity surveyor colleague. Finally, in this ideal scheme of generalship, the architect has. as an executive collaborator. the builder, the man who knows construction and possesses, through a tradition of experience, a skilled knowledge of labour, materials and ol the economic problems connected with both.”