UGLY BUILDINGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 427, 29 August 1947, Page 19

UGLY BUILDINGS

Sir-‘"Norman Blood" apparently wants to confuse the issue regarding standards of architecture; and I fear that I, by my loose reference to the photographic competition for the ugliest buildings held by the English monthly journal Horizon, may have given him some assistance. First let me say that I did not use the Horizon photographs as a "yardstick." My reference was a casual one. When I wrote that "the winning snaps were bad enough" I was speaking from ae ages What I should have said was e winning snap" for it was the piece oi domestic architecture that’ won first prize that I had in mind when I said that "one could find a hundred examples that were much more horrifying around the suburbs of Auckland." Of this Walter Gropius has (naturally) nothing to say. Astragal, in the Architects’ Journal, ascribes its appearance to "an inexpert wilfulness rather than downright ugliness," and says that "Since an element of fantasy is mever out of place in a country retreat, this would seem almost a virtue." The last remark is nonsense. We know all about these "elements of fantasy"; and I see no reason why Nature should be singled out as the special butt for such practical jokes. The building that won the Horizon competition is repulsively ugly. But my point was (after all), that, bad as it is, we can produce many worse examples in the suburbs of New Zealand. As for the’ Lawn ‘Road flats, which Gropius defends, I had no memory of the photograph as one of the prize-winners when I wrote my article. Looking it up now, I am not surprised. The photograph is a bad one, with the building partly obscured by trees. Personally, I am not very interested in flats, for they belong to a pattern of concentrated urban life with which I have little sympathy. But if we are to have flats, at least let them be well desigtted-and on this score I am quite prepared to believe that Gropius was right and the Horizon judges foolish for judging a building from such a bad photograph. To have attempted a comparison between this building and anything equivalent in New Zealand would have been a little meaningless: one would have to refer to the new Housing Department flats, which are. probably as good, architecturally, as the Lawn Road flats. The point I made originally is not affectéd by all this. It was, briefly, that in our New Zealand suburbs we have many -horrifying examples of pretentious and badly-designed houses, which are much worse than anything Horizon could show us, L suggest that "Norman Blood" should ignore what any "oracles" say about them, and go and take a good look at some of them himself.

A. R. D.

FAIRBURN

(Auckland).