No_6_June_1968 — Page 20

Hong Kong "a modern city with few visual connections with past"

It is intended to develop the Chinese and Far East part of the course still further, so that the De- partment will be uniquely situated in its knowledge of eastern architecture generally. But of course the problem of travel is still as pertinent here and the Chinese proverb is particularly

apt in the circumstances "to see it once is better than to hear about it a hundred times”,

Believing that architecture is inter- national in character, the ultimate ob- jective of the Department is to give a course, on a comparative basis, cover- ing the whole world. There is no

more reason for leaving out the early civilizations of Central America than including those of Sumer and Baby- lon.

The architecture of modern times is international in character and it is important to understand the historical influences from which it is derived, from whatever source they come

to see to what extent the architecture of I.M. Pei is influenced by the ar- chitecture of China or that of Frank Lloyd Wright by the Aztecs.

Besides the disadvantage of not be- ing able to travel, the Hong Kong student does not have the access to museums, art galleries and reference libraries enjoyed by his fellow stu- dents elsewhere. Development in this field in Hong Kong is either totally lacking or meagre.

Hong Kong today is a modern city, with few visual connections with the past, so that it is all the more im- portant that the History of Architec- ture is taught in the school. Not only does it help the Chinese student to relate himself with and to understand his own heritage, but it relates him with the rest of the world, from which he is unfortunately so isolated.

BUILDING TECHNOLOGY-

materials and techniques

'o try to describe something of the teaching of a subject like Materi- als and Techniques without outlining one's background thinking on the whole problem of which it forms but part, is dangerous. This is particul- arly so in a field that not only needs extensive analysis and study in depth itself, but also embraces the results of such studies in a wide range of other disciplines.

Restricted analyses are essential, but they must never be at the expense of the whole. In this case the whole is the production of buildings, singly or collectively, which, like the pro- duction of anything else, is a process of design.

The design process

Designing something is, in point of fact, a purposeful creative basic hu- man act that utilizes imagination, knowledge and skill to fulfil need.

All human needs, at the personal and social levels as well as in spiritual, emotional and materialistic planes, have both functional (i.e.: economic, utilitarian etc.) and expressive (i.e.: honest, elegant etc.) aspects whose re- lative importance will vary from one need to another.

A need the vital seed from which it all stems is the first mo-

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tive in the process of designing, and material without which nothing can be made and Technique without which no material can be shaped or moved are the other two. These motives are interdependent and their relationships exist, not only in various dimensions of space and time, but also on two variable but equally important levels the intuitive,

visual or Subjective level and the quantifiable, structural or Objective level,

It is the consistency with which these motives, in all their aspects, are answered that will determine not only the form of the object in this in- stance a building but also whether or not it fulfils its purpose and is therefore 'good' i.e. is Architec-

ture.

In some situations this whole pro- cess can be quite simple, but one has only to grasp the implication in mo- bilising the range of man's imagina- tion, the wealth of his theoretical and practical knowledge and the scope of his skills, in order to meet, through the prodigious compass of material and technique available to him, the complexity of his needs, to realise just how complicated it more usually is.

Building design is a particularly in- volved process, embracing all of man's individual and collective at-

by M. G. Munday

tempts to better the natural environ- ment for himself and his activities, and is additionally aggravated by the once slow and comprehensible but now accelerating and bewilderingly extensive, phenomenon of change.

The designer's task

It must be remembered, in educat- ing one's successors as distinct from one's assistants that they will

be at their most valuable and influ- ential in the society of the very dif ferent world of 10 or 20 years hence. They must, therefore, be taught to differentiate meaningful developments for tomorrow from the fashionable ones of today, and also to solve, con- structively and creatively, the huge problems that will eventually face them.

as

Much will have changed from the situation that now prevails, and the materials and techniques used, well as the systems and organisation that handle them, will have developed almost beyond recognition. However, even though man's needs may have changed too, the basic process of de- sign will always remain. The task of solving man's needs in terms of a 'built environment will continue to be that of the designer, or more real- ictically, the design team, for, with

Far East BUILDER, June 1968.

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