DISCOVERY 



113 



time is roughlj- 3,000 million years. Thus the earth 

 recedes into an inconcei%'able remoteness far beyond 

 the bounds of geological investigation, and there we 

 must forsake her, and invite the astronomer, whose 

 laboraton,' is the imiverse, to carry the story back still 



further. 



REFERENCES 

 Joseph Barrell : " Rhjrthms and the Measurements of Geo- 

 logical Time," Bull. Geol. Soc. America, vol. xxviii, pp. 



745-904. 1917- 

 Arthur Holmes : Tke Age of the Earth, Harper's Library of 

 Living Thought, 1913. 



The Architecture of the 

 Next Twenty Years 



By W. S. Purchon, M.A., A.R.I.B.A. 



Head 0/ the Departmenl 0/ Archileclure and Ciuic Design in the 

 Technical College, CardifJ 



In order to be in a position to appreciate the changes 

 which are coming over the art of the architect in this 

 country-, it is necessary' to glance at the development 

 of architecture since the Gothic Period. In a brief 

 article it is hardly possible to do more than mention a 

 few of the major movements — the coming of the Italians 

 during the reign of Henrj^ VIII ; the influence of the 

 less refined work of Germany and the Low Countries 

 in the days of Elizabeth and James I ; the introduction 

 of mature Itahan design by Inigo Jones, and its vigorous 

 development b}' our greatest architect. Sir Christopher 

 Wren ; the work of the amateurs of the eighteenth 

 centurj' ; and the Greek Revival of the closing years of 

 the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth 

 centuries. During the development of the latter move- 

 ment, the greatest monument of which is St. George's 

 Hall, Liverpool, a return was made to the types of 

 design which flourished in the Middle Ages, the rival 

 schools indulging in the famous " Battle of the Styles." 

 A further comphcation was a contemporaneous under- 

 current of more or less pure Italian work. 



During the third quarter of the nineteenth century 

 George Devey, Norman Shaw, and others grasped the 

 facts that we were not hving in either Greece or Italy, 

 and that the conditions of life had undergone serious 

 changes since the time of Pericles, or even since the 

 equally fascinating days of the Black Prince ; and they 

 attempted to base an architecture on the later tradi- 

 tional work of our own country and the special require- 

 ments of their own times. Largely to their efforts do 

 we owe our acknowledged position as house designers. 



The so-called " Queen Anne " style which resulted 

 was subjected first to a coarsening process, and then to 

 two further cross-currents — thfe " New Art " move- 

 ment, which did some good by drawing increased 



attention to the importance of material ; and a further 

 attempt to get back to the fountain-head and to the use 

 of Greek detail and forms as the alphabet of our archi- 

 tectural language. Possibly in sj-mpathy with the 

 Entente Cordiale, architectural forms which had received 

 the sanction of Paris were also admitted by those who 

 otherwise drank only from the Pierian spring. A 

 better thing was, however, coming to us from the 

 French capital — a greater abihty to deal with the 

 planning of buildings on a large scale. 



And so the war found us : possessing considerable 

 ability in the design of country houses, and some httle 

 trick of planning larger buildings on axial hues, and 

 very interested indeed in the design of fa9ades in the 

 fashionable manner. 



A note of warning had certainly been sounded by a 

 few who saw that all was not well, and that salvation 

 would not be found through the medium of ancient 

 Greece with a dash of modern Paris, even if the facades 

 were crowned with balustrades faintly reminiscent of 

 the Union Jack. Whisperings of ferro-concrete were 

 heard, ideas of Towti Planning were drifting across the 

 EngUsh Channel, and here and there a grandiose scheme 

 for the embellishment of one or other of our cities was 

 prepared, but it very rarely materialised. There was 

 much talk of housing reform in the air, and a garden 

 city and a few garden villages were actually built. 



And now that the war has passed over us, leaving 

 in its wake this somewhat peculiar peace, what is to 

 become of architecture ? 



In the first place, the cost of building is now from two 

 to three times as great as in pre-war days; secondly, 

 the insistent demand is for houses, all the houses, and 

 nothing but the houses (with a possible exception in 

 favour of war-memorials) ; and, thirdly, the architects 

 have been up against grim facts. Some of these facts 

 are of a type which will hardly bear writing about, and 

 in any case this is certainly not the place in which to 

 write of them. 



It seems clear, however, that those who are going to 

 make the architecture of the next twenty or thirty 

 years have passed far beyond the " pretty-pretty " 

 stage. To them the art is a great and a serious one. 

 They are neither the amateurs of the eighteenth century 

 nor the archaeologists of the first half of the nineteenth. 

 Possibly they may base their work on the details of the 

 buildings on the Athenian AcropoUs, more probably on 

 the sound and vigorous work of the architect of St. 

 Paul's (work more in harmony with our chmate and our 

 usual building materials) ; but the important tiling is 

 that they will be practical artists, in touch with modern 

 requirements and modern methods of construction. 



Broadly speaking, the high cost of building work will 

 lead naturally to a process of simplification; a con- 



