Far East
ARCHITECT & BUILDER
The oldest trade journal in the Far East
EDITOR: A. G. BARNETT
MAY 1966
news review
Contents
News Review
27
Draft Plans for HK Satellite Towns
30
World News
33
Police Training School
37
Wholesale Fish Market
44
Ramon Magsaysay Centre
50
Mykonos and Delos a study in architec-
tural contrast, by Prof. W.G. Gregory 52
Civil Engineering Section
Princess Margaret Flyover
Materials and Equipment
Contractors' Plant
Building Plans Approved
Contracts
Awarded
:
:
57
65
69
73
75
Cover picture: T-shaped columns and prestressed longi- tudinal beams of the Princess Margaret Road/Waterloo Road flyover, Kowloon. This view towards the south is taken from the ground level road junction. The project is described on page 57.
Published monthly by Far East Trade Press Ltd., 1908, Prince's Building, Hong Kong.
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SINGAPORE PLANNING CRITISISED
A SINGAPORE architect, Mr. Edwin C. T. Chan,, has hit out at the spate of "cheap-looking" estate houses and the "ill-assortment" of business houses and office buildings in the State.
In an article in the latest newsletter of the Town Planning Institute (Malaysia Branch), Mr. Chan calls for some form of "aesthetic restraint" in planning. He sug- gests that an advisory committee comprising architects and planners be set up to excercise some measure of restraint on aesthetics in development along main roads, import- ant commercial and public areas.
He says it is heartening to see that the Government's urban renewal schemes are going along the right lines, but this is not the case in other areas.
"Estate houses,” says Mr. Chan, “are invariably erect- ed without consideration of the deleterious effect on the surroundings. In some instances the beautiful natural sur- roundings, trees, rocks and hilis, are simply and crimin- ally destroyed and replaced with monstrous looking edi- fices.
"Even the colour schemes in most cases are hotch- potch, uncontrolled and vulgar. The tall and often awk- ward looking apartments or flats are equally bad, un- related and out of scale with their surroundings, except in keeping with the density of the area."
Mr. Chan continues: "In the central and commercial areas an ill-assortment of business houses have sprung up in recent years with virtually no consideration of blending in with adjoining buildings and relating to the surround- ings or any thought of the context of the whole environ-
ment.
He expresses alarm at what he describes as the com- plete indifference of the public and the lack of strong, persistent decisive influence of planners and architects as professional bodies.
Any new advisory committee, he adds, should be re- quired to give a more decisive and stronger sense of direc- tion and a more informed brief than the usual practice of vague and oblique suggestions of conforming to the environment, which in essence is merely to follow exactly what your neighbour has done.
DENSITY ZONING ADOPTED
THE Hong Kong Government has decided that it is in the public interest to follow a policy of systematic density zoning in Hong Kong.
A Government spokesman said last month that the Governor-in-Council had adopted the policy of density zoning on the recommendation of the Land Development Planning Committee, an inter-departmental committee. which had also advised that this policy could best be im- plemented by administrative means through:
(a) the specification of three zones in Hong Kong and
Kowloon illustrated by suitable plans;
(b) the application of similar principles in the New Ter- ritories on a restricted scale and then only to such areas as the District Commissioner, New Territories. may from time to time recommend:
Far East Architect & Builder May, 1966
27