ARCHITECTURE
PLANNING 1 (An occasional publication), 2/6. B lagers magazine which aims to set architecture in its social context is the voice of a vigorous group of young
Aucklanders, but is valid and important for the whole of New Zealand. In the near future, this country will have to build the equivalent of a dozen new towns, and we have had up to now no serious criticism of architecture as a part of the total environment in which people live. If, for example, there is any governing idea which takes notice of the whole nature of man in the minds of those who are now filling the Hutt Valley with houses, it is not yet apparent. Even so rudimentary an idea as the street is unknown in New Zealand-the natural assumption that houses, shops, church, school and offices when seen together should present, in spite of their differences, a closely integrated pattern. There is no art, no aspect of human culture in which this land has so much to learn as that treated in this review. Planning 1 gets to work on this state of affairs, but of course it does not get very far. It takes six pages to have a good swipe at the design for Wellington Cathedral, a negative article which is the most heated in the issue. A. R. D. Fairburn in an introduction expects that "its contributors will at times talk a. certain | amount of nonsense." In this number the nonsense is confined mainly to typo- | gtaphy, proving that architects are about. as wise in a printing shop as you would expect. And there, of course, is the snag. If the architect is to blossom into a planner of everything in which we live, move and have our being, then we must show evidence of understanding a great deal more than the theories of functional building. Mumford has said recently in| England that it is easy to build ideal towns, but it is more difficult to make people like living in them. ; For that it is necessary for planners to be humble before other people’s habits, preferences, and knowledge. It is necessary to have so wide a sympathy that they can persuade our chaotic cities and citizens into better courses. But these qualities are not often found in young people on a crusade.
H.
W.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 380, 4 October 1946, Page 23
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390ARCHITECTURE New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 380, 4 October 1946, Page 23
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