No_4_1959 — Page 29

A NOTED AUSTRALIAN PUTS HIS VIEWS

Few fully realise just how much our lives have been influenced by the machine age in the last 50 years. Never before had people to adjust to so many revolutionary changes in such a short span of time. Methods of transportation and industrial produc- tion have had far-reaching effects on our everyday lives. All this material change has demanded of us to adjust and absorb new standards. In almost a lifetime we have changed from horse and buggy transport to supersonic flight. Formal Victorian social life, with its class distinctions and elaborate servant-run housekeeping, has given way to a fusion of social strata and the now average mechanised house- hold with its labour-saving devices of deep-freeze, garbage disposal, and dishwashers.

We have welcomed all this, of course. Ever-increasing numbers of gadgets make things easier, and we accept them. There is, however, a strange conflict in the era of rapid change which has had the curious effect of producing a kind of split- thinking in many of us.

Technology and the visual arts have always gone hand in hand in signifi cant periods of the past. The needs, the means, and the visual forms pro- duced in any period have always been related, and part of each other. Today we have all this material progress but we seem to cling tena- ciously to the visual forms of the past.

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As an example, many an trialist today will be quite ready to accept changes suggested by scientific research and engineering if it will in- crease and better his production. This progressive attitude, however, will not only stop, but give way to nostalgic retrogression when it comes to build- ing his home. In а subconscious effort to counteract the seemingly never-ending innovations of his daily life, his house will often be a 20th century Tudor castle in miniature filled with all varieties of antique furniture, but with of course the latest in refrigeration equipment and air-conditioning control. His car will be the newest model.

Significantly enough, this same person's appreciation of painting will have stood still in some romantic period of the 19th century. He seems to have chosen the frame of his build

THE HONG KONG & FAR EAST BUILDER

ON MODERN DESIGNING

ings, his immediate physical environ- ment, to remain stagnant. It becomes to him the one unchanging thing to which he can cling, and by which he can call a halt to the constant need to

change and to adapt.

All this, of course, is evidence of the generally low cultural values today

SO

much in contrast to our material

progress.

What should we do about all this? I would say not only accept the tech- nological progress but also endorse and make part of us the genuine aesthetic implications of this progress. Our artists, who can be called sensitive translators of the impacts of their environment into visual form, are showing us the way.

HARRY SEIDLER, M. Arch. A. R. I. B. A., author of this article, is a leading Austra lian architect who is noted, particularly, for his success- ful blending of functionalism and the aesthetic.

Stimulated by new structural materials a new aesthetic of building has been born. Whereas in the past we built ponderous heavy structures of masonry modelled on the age-old styles of architecture, our buildings today that employ steel and concrete will immediately appear lighter. The skeleton method of building has freed our floor plans. The result is more light with greater flexibility of arrange- ment and the relationship of building to outside, which in the past had to be very definitely blocked by heavi ness, can now be opened and consist of more skins of glass "curtain" wall material.

or other

I would not go so far as to say that we should live in glass houses that would be most uncomfortable. But glass, if used with new structural materials which eliminate the solid wall as a supporting necessity, can be a blessing if used wisely.

First of all, there must be privacy. Glass should be used only where one cannot look in, such as in a building on a hillside high above the ground

VOLUME 14, NUMBER 4

to take in a view, or if on the ground in built-up areas. It should be used to open the interior on to a private courtyard. Secondly, protect it from the sun! Never use large glass areas on the east or west unless protected by scientifically designed sun-control devices otherwise a hot-box will be the result!

And all sun protection devices must be outside the glass to be really effec- tive. The north is the ideal exposure. There the sun is above and can easily be shaded by a roof overhang, to stop the high summer sun and allow the lower layers of the winter sun to come in and help heat the interior.

What about interior arrangement? New structural materials and a ten- dency toward airiness and lightness coupled with the more informal living habits of today's family, point the way toward open planning. We no longer need the separate parlour, or dining rooms of Victorian times.

Living areas can flow together they can and must completely eliminate wasteful and ugly passages. Even a small area, particularly if one wall is of glass and the scenery or courtyard becomes part of the interior, will immediately look twice its size. A joyous feeling of freedom and space will result. This will have a desirable effect on our lives. We will be happier and healthier in such an atmosphere.

Another characteristic of the genuine modern building will be visual con- trast. We do not want sun only or shadow only. A play between visual opposites will be the most pleasing; a glass wall contrasted by a plain solid wall. A smooth white surface opposed by a rough-textured stone, natural timber or coloured surface. There must, however, always be an air of simplicity, if the result is to be con- vincing.

Let the site be the key to the solu- tion, and let the solution be basic and direct. A building plan should be solved with a constant give and take of a three-way simultaneous design process. First, the needs must be satisfied ideally. The arrangement must respresent a faultless answer to the practical problems of housing the needs of the occupants.

Secondly, select and assemble logi- cally suitable structural materials in a

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