jiilu:
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new criteria by which cities can be judged'
luxury and otherwise. Our contem- porary residential architecture rarely rivals the environmental standards of the modern office building.
With the exception of those com- muting beyond the suburbs, perhaps most find domestic building satisfac- tion in our suburbs, renowned for their collective featurelessness; or otherwise settle in one of the re- sidential "luxury" high rise buildings which are usually lacking by almost all comparisons, be they aesthetic, spatial, or quality of finish. Invariably the basis for luxury is the site rather than the building itself. Comparisons be- tween architectural standards of con- temporary commercial and domestic building therefore largely favour the commercial building.
It is the rising land value of the inner city core that is the basis for the size of the inner city phenomenon, where the value of that precious 3% - 5% of land exceeds by hundreds of times the value of its surrounding dis- tricts. It is a time where practical, not theoretical limits are the only deter- minants of the size our buildings, and the results are not to be unexpected.
The buildings' size alone is the
New forms interpret the computer age
cause of many a detractors aesthetic discomfort. This discomfort is usually emphasized by the older surrounding buildings still constituting the major development within our cities in this time of transition. But neither the bulk of the buildings themselves nor their juxtaposition within our cities is a valid basis for adverse criticism if we accept discord due to change as an indispensible part of a city's vitality.
New criteria
When we admire the older remain ing parts of our cities we often forget that we are observing a situation ar- rived at incrementally, and not spon- taneously. Given that the contempor- ary note may strike a sharper note of discord than any of the new develop ments of previous eras, we have to accept that through the process of time the discordancy of a city can mellow into something we come to call variety. Who can say that today's attitudes will not similarly mellow?
It is at least contestable that our new commercial building centres re- present a totally new criteria by which cities can be judged, thus making many of the comparisons with the past in
valid. Inner cities are no longer places for living as much as they are places for working; the inner city inhabitant is now a different type of person. De- pendence upon the hinterland for sur- vival is changing markedly.
Here in the discussion of standards it would be appropriate to return to the 'aesthetic satisfaction of the pub- lic'. It is clear that whatever the degree of outrage or sense of loss by the public, it is pointless only to question that our architects cannot do some- thing better, for when those same members of the public become the buying public their needs for maximi- zing the return of their investment seem to be satisfied by large contem- porary glass walled buildings which continue to form the bulk of our city office structures. Likewise the struc- ture of our economy is unlikely to be influenced by arguments based on aesthetic taste aesthetic taste - a notoriously fickle and unquantifiable standard.
Improvement in building standards has taken place largely in response to the quantifiable standards for insula- tion and weather protection. Fire and sanitary codes have also played their part. Part and parcel of these new
Far East BUILDER, February 1969
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