helping to improve the general level of house design throughout the country. Certainly such a scheme, if it could be properly worked, might open up the way to improvement. Mr. Spill-er’s second suggestion related to the country-side, or, rather, to the preservation of beauty spots. He thought that the owners of such properties rarely wished to part with them, and were only forced to do so for economic reasons. He proposed, therefore, that those owners should enter into an undertaking with the National Trust, or some other recognised institution, to sterilise them from development over a long period of years, in consideration of which such properties would be exempt from death duties. But the most original proposal was that all children should be taught to read and understand plans as part of their
ordinary school training. His experience, both as a builder and as a member of committees responsible for the passing of plans, had been that it was extremely rare to find a layman who could read a plan or visualise the information it contained. He had
known men, supplied with a plan and particulars, buy properties they had never seen, who were horrified when they afterwards came to examine their purchase. One hesitates to suggest an addition to the present burdens of school curricula, but there is sound common sense in the idea that everyone who lives in a house ought to understand how to read the plan of it, and there is no doubt that for the man who aspires to sit on a building committee it should be made an essential qualification.
Notes and Comments
The Building Operativesʼ Conference
The annual conference of the National Federation of Building Trades’ Operatives came to one or two notable decisions in the course of their proceedings. In particular, the proposal to confederate the various trade organisations was definitely rejected by a large majority, but not finally disposed of, for one resolution provided that the question of closer unity should be referred back to the Emergency Committee, with the instruction that their labours should be devoted to finding a method of completely amalgamating the unions in the building industries. Amalgamation may seem preferable to confederation, but we should fancy that to find an acceptable scheme for the former would be even more difficult than for the latter. This is, however, a matter of internal politics that is not for us, but for the operatives themselves. More promising, perhaps, was the dictum of the President, Mr. Thomas Barron, that “men may still express themselves in their craft. ” One of their greatest tasks, in his opinion, was to devise schemes for the proper technical training and education of the workers in the industry, and he recorded that it was their aim to see that every lad entering the industry shall have full opportunity of equipping himself as a craftsman who need not be ashamed of his work, and thus to play his part in raising the status of the industry and of the workers engaged in it. He paid a tribute to the valuable assistance of the R. I. B. A. in the matter of training
apprentices, and said that they hoped to secure the willing co-operation of the building trade employers. This is an altogether admirable pronouncement, and Mr. Barron may rest assured that architects will give any assistance they can to ensure that his young apprentices shall develop not as ‘‘hands, ’’ but as intel
ligent craftsmen with an interest and a pride in their work for its own sake. All architects realise the difference this means in the fulfilment of their ideas, and it is for that reason the R. I. B. A. has in recent years striven to inculcate that greater comity of interest between the designer and the craftsman.
The King’s Highway
Roads, the traffic on them, and the Road Fund, are subjects that continue to fill a considerable space in the papers. The County Councils’ Association have registered a formal protest against the proposed merger of the annual receipts of the Road Fund into the general exchequer receipts of the country. The sums taken to balance the Budget deficits have so seriously crippled the Fund that the necessary large sums required for road schemes in hand in Surrey and Middlesex are not available. Mr. Rees Jeffreys has suggested, as a way out of the impasse,
that the County Councils should be empowered to borrow the whole of the capital sums required, instead of their proportion only, and that the loan charges should be wholly defrayed out of the Road Fund during the period for which the loan is sanctioned. The depletion of the Road Fund is, however, resented not only by local authorities and motorists, but by many members of the public, who find crossing the streets a matter of increasing difficulty, and complain that the cost of constructing subways under all the busy streets might reasonably have been debited to the Fund.
The Disorder of the Bath
A correspondent of The Times has been complaining rather bitterly about the faulty arrangement of the average bath, one side of which is usually placed against a wall of the bathroom, with the result that it is impossible ever to thoroughly clean out the dust and dirt that necessarily accumulate in any corner difficult or impossible of access. This state of things he regards as inconsistent with the hygienic purposes of the bath and the apartment in which it is placed; and his remedy would require the bath to be placed centrally and clear of the walls. This is a standard, we fear, to which the average dwelling could not aspire; and the demand is typical of many others that call for every possible convenience and labour saving contrivance without additional cost. The trouble with the layman is his tendency to attribute to stupidity what is really a question of £ s. d. A visit to any of the big sanitary-ware showrooms would disclose the existence of baths with porcelain sides that would obviate all this correspondent’s trouble; and if he is prepared to pay the piper, the hygienic note he desires will doubtless be forthcoming.
Personal
Mr. Walter Westley Russell, R. A., has been elected Keeper of the Royal Academy, in succession to Mr. Charles Sims, R. A., who resigned that office in December last.
At Liverpool University, on Saturday last, the honorary degree of Master of Architecture (M. Arch. ) was conferred on Mr. Robert Atkinson, F. R. I. B. A., Director of Studies at the Architectural Association.
The late Mr. Alfred Charles Houston, A. R. I. B. A., who died on March 11 last, left estate amounting to £37, 859, and his will, after detailing a number of bequests to various charitable institutions, directs that the residue of the property shall go to the R. I. B. A. for educational and maintenance scholarships for sons of architects and artists in impecunious circumstances.
ordinary school training. His experience, both as a builder and as a member of committees responsible for the passing of plans, had been that it was extremely rare to find a layman who could read a plan or visualise the information it contained. He had
known men, supplied with a plan and particulars, buy properties they had never seen, who were horrified when they afterwards came to examine their purchase. One hesitates to suggest an addition to the present burdens of school curricula, but there is sound common sense in the idea that everyone who lives in a house ought to understand how to read the plan of it, and there is no doubt that for the man who aspires to sit on a building committee it should be made an essential qualification.
Notes and Comments
The Building Operativesʼ Conference
The annual conference of the National Federation of Building Trades’ Operatives came to one or two notable decisions in the course of their proceedings. In particular, the proposal to confederate the various trade organisations was definitely rejected by a large majority, but not finally disposed of, for one resolution provided that the question of closer unity should be referred back to the Emergency Committee, with the instruction that their labours should be devoted to finding a method of completely amalgamating the unions in the building industries. Amalgamation may seem preferable to confederation, but we should fancy that to find an acceptable scheme for the former would be even more difficult than for the latter. This is, however, a matter of internal politics that is not for us, but for the operatives themselves. More promising, perhaps, was the dictum of the President, Mr. Thomas Barron, that “men may still express themselves in their craft. ” One of their greatest tasks, in his opinion, was to devise schemes for the proper technical training and education of the workers in the industry, and he recorded that it was their aim to see that every lad entering the industry shall have full opportunity of equipping himself as a craftsman who need not be ashamed of his work, and thus to play his part in raising the status of the industry and of the workers engaged in it. He paid a tribute to the valuable assistance of the R. I. B. A. in the matter of training
apprentices, and said that they hoped to secure the willing co-operation of the building trade employers. This is an altogether admirable pronouncement, and Mr. Barron may rest assured that architects will give any assistance they can to ensure that his young apprentices shall develop not as ‘‘hands, ’’ but as intel
ligent craftsmen with an interest and a pride in their work for its own sake. All architects realise the difference this means in the fulfilment of their ideas, and it is for that reason the R. I. B. A. has in recent years striven to inculcate that greater comity of interest between the designer and the craftsman.
The King’s Highway
Roads, the traffic on them, and the Road Fund, are subjects that continue to fill a considerable space in the papers. The County Councils’ Association have registered a formal protest against the proposed merger of the annual receipts of the Road Fund into the general exchequer receipts of the country. The sums taken to balance the Budget deficits have so seriously crippled the Fund that the necessary large sums required for road schemes in hand in Surrey and Middlesex are not available. Mr. Rees Jeffreys has suggested, as a way out of the impasse,
that the County Councils should be empowered to borrow the whole of the capital sums required, instead of their proportion only, and that the loan charges should be wholly defrayed out of the Road Fund during the period for which the loan is sanctioned. The depletion of the Road Fund is, however, resented not only by local authorities and motorists, but by many members of the public, who find crossing the streets a matter of increasing difficulty, and complain that the cost of constructing subways under all the busy streets might reasonably have been debited to the Fund.
The Disorder of the Bath
A correspondent of The Times has been complaining rather bitterly about the faulty arrangement of the average bath, one side of which is usually placed against a wall of the bathroom, with the result that it is impossible ever to thoroughly clean out the dust and dirt that necessarily accumulate in any corner difficult or impossible of access. This state of things he regards as inconsistent with the hygienic purposes of the bath and the apartment in which it is placed; and his remedy would require the bath to be placed centrally and clear of the walls. This is a standard, we fear, to which the average dwelling could not aspire; and the demand is typical of many others that call for every possible convenience and labour saving contrivance without additional cost. The trouble with the layman is his tendency to attribute to stupidity what is really a question of £ s. d. A visit to any of the big sanitary-ware showrooms would disclose the existence of baths with porcelain sides that would obviate all this correspondent’s trouble; and if he is prepared to pay the piper, the hygienic note he desires will doubtless be forthcoming.
Personal
Mr. Walter Westley Russell, R. A., has been elected Keeper of the Royal Academy, in succession to Mr. Charles Sims, R. A., who resigned that office in December last.
At Liverpool University, on Saturday last, the honorary degree of Master of Architecture (M. Arch. ) was conferred on Mr. Robert Atkinson, F. R. I. B. A., Director of Studies at the Architectural Association.
The late Mr. Alfred Charles Houston, A. R. I. B. A., who died on March 11 last, left estate amounting to £37, 859, and his will, after detailing a number of bequests to various charitable institutions, directs that the residue of the property shall go to the R. I. B. A. for educational and maintenance scholarships for sons of architects and artists in impecunious circumstances.