LOG CABIN TO WHITE BOX
THE buildings of a nation (said Goldwin Smith) are an important part of its history, but a part that has been neglected by all historians because the historians themselves have been entirely ignorant of the subject. In the last para- graph of the preface to this book the author says, "the same point is made throughout that all through history and pre- history, the house has been shaped to suit the needs and habits of its owners by using to the best possible advantage all the knowledge and material at the disposal of the builders. Only when this principle has been followed, never when it has been neglected, has true beauty been achieved. The beauty of the past we all love, and in tracing its origins we shall perhaps light on the clue we need so urgently, to help us in creating the beauty of the future."
As addressed to the children on the wireless in the first instance, the subject proved so entertaining for their elders that publication in book-form has resulted. The photographs which interrupt the text so constantly will add greatly to the entertainment given on the wireless without television. All the best modern schools are equipped with cinema apparatus, and the Board of Education might well employ Mr. Boum- phrey to tell his story of our scientific progress pictorially, as the book is too expensive for the younger generation. The lurid wrapper with a portrait of an ancestor, an ultra crafts- men-house, and the latest mechanical house hides the chastest of covers that would look well in any library. The story of our towns and countryside is sketched " from swamp and forest to iron age camp; from Roman villa and Saxon manor to eighteenth-century town and country planning."
The letterpress is full of sound historic information, and the description of the Roman-British villas and towns is particularly instructive. Cement seems to be the author's ideal material for rehousing the masses in his vision of a new and tidier world. The Romans used it for support, and not for protection from the weather. Their methods of heating their villas were quite as scientific as ours, and less vulnerable to weather conditions. Their bathing arrange- ments were as elaborate and more ritualistic than the most expensive modem efforts. There are no references to authori- ties on building construction, but Vitruvius is introduced, oddly enough, to account for the earliest form of primitive timber construction, which, with wattle and daub filling, has still much more to recommend it for cottages than cement filling, the most unnatural of all weather-resisting materials.
We are reminded that the Normans taught us to build in stone, but it is to the Abbot that we are to look for the origin of our homes of to-day, " because the improvements made by the Abbot were copied later by the Lords, in their manor houses, as times grew more peaceful, and again copied by the rich merchant class from which our middle class has sprung."
An aerial view of the uncontrolled cities, as compared with a modern town laid out on definite radiating lines from monumentally designed points, carries the subject of " your house and mine " into far larger issues. We realise that the Great Fire of London Was an opportunity lost, for a con- trolled plan of London that would have saved millions and made the present traffic problem more soluble. The recent Bressey report, and the increasing rivalry between road and rail, magnifies the problem commercially. It would seem that the future depends on the reorganisation of the provinces, as every complex organisation should be a subordinated federa- tion of single organisms. The conflict between road and rail and the vast changes that Mr. Boumphrey suggests are coming, in the spread of farming combines, would provide a unique opportunity for some creative mind applying itself to this gigantic problem. Whilst we do not believe that the form of building which Mr. Boumphrey visualises will emerge from this change, the picture shown for the development of an important site in London is certainly more architecturally impressive than the untidy development which has taken its
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