SIMPLIFIED ARCHITECTURE.* M. Ron MALLET-STEVENS is a brave, ingenious—and (we
suspect) young—French architect who has drawn thirty-two entertaining designs for various kinds of buildings, and has had them published without comment inside a portfolio labelled A Modern City. Such a city, if ever realized, would seem to us to consist exclusively of cinemas, for though several designs are improbably enough called " Bank," " Hotel," " Police Station," " Hospital," " Church," " Stores," " Workmen's Houses," &c., we should instantly recognize each as quite unmistakably derived from some archetypal
cubist super-picture-palace at Vienna or Budapest. .
True, according to the pictures, the roofs would themselves give us almost enough variety, as their colour can be black, white, magenta, veridian green, yellow, orange, or what you will—au choir. Their construction and materials are left a mystery, and the same fine disregard for structural considera- tions is shown in the rest of the fabric, which, however, appears to be designed with an eye to execution in ferro-concrete. It is however unfair as well as ungrateful to criticize such obviously airy projets as serious building propositions, as their author cannot really intend them to be taken any more literally than his supernatural and highly conventionalized trees and other " properties."
Read thus, the drawings are suggestive as well as decorative, and show a considerable feeling for Mass, Line, and Cohe- sion," the three great aesthetic attributes of architecture that were beginning to inspire such interesting building develop- ments in Germany just before the War. We certainly prefer the bold simplicity of M. Stevens's designs to those of the modern Dutch school, as displayed in certain new buildings at Amsterdam, where novelty per se, a clean break with tradition, and a general flouting of accepted' forms and proportions seem to be more esteemed than any positive architectonic quality • d Modern City. Designs by Rob Mallet-Stevens. London : Bean Bros. PO& inherent in the " New Style." The Amsterdam municipal authorities, however, are so intrigued by its audacious vivacity that we even hear of licences to build being withheld from those who are not prepared to kick over the old architectural traces with sufficient vigour. It is good to hear of City Fathers taking so lively an interest in such matters, but Amsterdam will probably come to regret that its rulers' enthusiasm was not balanced by a little more feeling for tradition. No Englishman, however, can dare to lecture the Continent on civic amenities : he remembers his own county town, and is silent.
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