402 STYLE IX ARCHITECTURE. 



We can from these instances mulerstancl that the plannini;- of 

 houses with a view to pri\acy, cleanhness and comfort is ahnost 

 wholly a modern science. 



The most valuable advice I can offer to every designer of 

 buildings in this country is, first of all, to enter into an alliance 

 \\ith the sun. One cannot too often repeat that the desire for 

 superficial ornament and parti-coloured surfaces, which please 

 us under the low and shy sun of England and Holland, is un- 

 natural in the bright and sunny atmosphere of South Africa. 



Here, as in (Greece,. Italy and Spain, the commonest build- 

 ing, if we have but the restraint to construct it with plain wall 

 surfaces well' disposed between deep recesses and over- 

 shadowing cornices, can be daily " flattered " bv what 

 Shakespeare has called the " Heavenly Alchemy " of the sun. 

 This beauty of the sun and shadow, which the Greeks and 

 Romans used to such advantage, and the trained Northern 

 architect yearns for in vain, we have always at our hand, if we 

 are but wise enough to recognise and welcome it. 



It might be said to those searching" a style in architecture, 

 " Would ye seek a style, seek it not." A new creation in 

 architecture has seldom come to anyone conscientiously work- 

 ing along any known grooves of style, but it might be achieved 

 by a devout band of workers giving form to new needs along 

 the lines of organic building. 



A little knowledge in art is certainly a dangerous thing. It 

 is almost, I think, a truism that English Elizabethan architec- 

 ture is good in an inverse ratio to the learning" displayed upon 

 it. The organic building of the time was magnificent; the 

 pedantic application of Italian detail was bad. It was not till 

 the time of Inigo Jones that the new knowledge penetrated 

 superficialities to the deeper and nobler qualities of the art. 



If therefore we want to create a .South African School of 

 Architecture, we must not depend on our knowledge or use 

 of the accidents and superficialities of style, the orders or the 

 applied pilasters and mouldings, but rather work out the primal 

 elements of which architecture is composed; the column, the 

 lintol, the arch, the vault or the dome, the wall veil and the 

 cornice. Yet I must not seem to deprecate the value of 

 scholarship in arcliitecture. The architect must be steeped in 

 knowledge of the masterpiece of architecture, as it is said that 

 such great masters of the English language as John Bright and 

 John Ruskin were saturated in the literature of the Bible and 

 the English poets. Knowledge in architecture must, like the 

 younger child, g"o hand in hand with constructional wisdom. 



I have little time to touch on the interesting" subject of the 

 beautiful architecture of the early Dutch colonists at the Cape. 

 Oddly enough there are no houses like them in Holland, where 

 the inhabitants lived for the most part in tall, squeezed-up houses 

 in the crowded street, or had mere hip-roofed cottages in the 

 fens. The Cape Colonial undoubtedly evolved a new style by 

 applying" a mixture of common-sense and tradition to new- 

 materials and needs. 



The charm of these houses consists not so much in their detail 

 as in the repose and dignity of the long, low lines of non-re- 



