Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/496

 474 ful set of designs. This was another instance in which a valuable member of the Institute (Mr. A- W. Blomfield) sent a pupil to the front. Mr. Streat- feild came of a family of antiquaries, and the work for which he had gained the prize did them honour. Mr. Perr’s Prize of £20, for the second best set of measured drawings illustrative on the same subject. Gained by Mr. P. J. Marvin. Mr. EastLake, secretary, said that, in accordance with a suggestion which had been made at the last general meeting, the Council had awarded two medals of merit in this competition, in addition to the prizes offered by Mr. Peek, for the drawings submitted were of a very high character, and called for some further recognition than a mere record of the fact. Those medals of merit had been awarded to Mr. H. Avern and Mr. W. L. Spiers. The Prestpent, in presenting these medals of merit, remarked, that although Mr. Avern was new to London, it was to be hoped that the present would not be his last effort in competing for the prizes of the Institute, as his work possessed marked excel- lences. Mr. Spiers was a brother of Mr, Phéne Spiers, and was a most patient and industrious student of architecture. Mr. Prex’s Prize ror Convent GATEWAY, BarxixG.—Mr. Peek's prize of £10 for the best set of drawings illustrating the restoration of the Convent Gateway, Barking. Gained by Mr. P. J. Marvin. The Prestpent, in presenting this prize, con- gratulated Mr. Marvin on haying carried off two prizes. VOLUNTARY ARCHITECTURAL EXAMINATION. The PresmpeNtT announced that five candidates had presented themselves this year for the pre- liminary examination, and all had passed in a very satisfactory manner—so much so that it would be invidious to place them in any order of merit. THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. The Prestpent said: Gentlemen, I believe those announcements finish the Institute business for this Session, and in the old language I may say, as they used to say of the king, ‘‘ Le roi est mort, vive le roi" —the Institute is dead; live the Conference. I have very few remarks to offer. Let me begin the few words I have to offer by reminding you that the Conference is repeated this year in order to bring up the reports of the several committees appointed at our meeting of last year; but for the future it is proposed that these Conferences shall only take place biennially. The main difference between the programme of last year and thepresent is this: that in 1871 it extended over a wider field, and embraced more subjects. Five papers were announced for each meeting, but this was found to leave too little time for discussion, and our bill of fare this year will be less pretentious. The attention of the Con- ference last year was divided between Architecture as an art and as a profession. The first elicited several interesting papers; but the latter resulted in some important resolutions, the offspring of which are the reports we have this year to consider, and which will necessarily give a drier and more business- like character to our meeting. When I had the honour last year of welcoming to London, in the name of the Royal Institute of British Architects, those members of the profession practising in the provinces who are not actually associated with this Institute, but whom we were anxious to bring into counsel with us on matters deeply interesting to our profession (aud, let me add, hardly less so to the public), I felt it my duty to lay before you at the first meeting some of those points which seemed most important and pressing, and on which unanimity of practice was most desirable. The principal ones were, I think, subsequently discussed and considered in a careful and dispassionate spirit; and I venture to believe you will find that the three subjects which were then delegated to the consideration of separate committees have received great care and considera- tion at the hands of the gentlemen forming those committees, though their labours have been so sneer- ingly alluded to in one of the professional papers. Whither the various suggestions contained in those reports be generally accepted or not, of this I am quite certain—that the whole body of our profession stands deeply indebted to the gentlemen forming these committees (and especially to those who acted as the secretaries), for the great amount of time and labour bestowed on these subjects. (Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, these reports will be officially submitted to you to-morrow and Wednesday for consideration and discussion, so as, in the words of your own reso- lution of last year, ‘to insure (as far as practicable) the greatest unanimity of action and opinion amongst the whole body of professional men in the United Kingdom.” On one of these subjects (viz., on the employment of surveyors) considerable difference of THE BUILDING NEWS. opinion will be found to exist, and to such an extent that the Council did not feel able formally to adopt It therefore will come before you as the Whether, on further discussion, this matter may be put on such a basis this report. suggestions of the committee. as to insure something like uniformity of practice, or whether it had better be left to the individual action of members, remains to be seen. Happily, it is one involving no question of professional honour or etiquette, so that each architect may remain at liberty to adopt that course which, under the special circumstances of his own case, he may think most conducive to the interests of his client. (Hear, hear.) The Committees have, I believe, adopted the only practical course that was open to them: they have sought the opinions of large numbers of their profes- sional brethren, and these opinions (bound together and now lying on the table) form a most bewildering mass of evidence, hardly less so than that recently laid before the public in the case of a celebrated “claimant.” (Laughter.) The secretaries (failing to find those ‘‘tattoo marks” which might throw clear light on the subject) have had to analyse and classify these conflicting views as far as possible, and upon the preponderance of those opinions to a great extent have been based the reports. Many of the replies to these inquiries have been most considerate and suggestive, expressing readiness to act upon the views expressed by the majority at the Conference ; one or two, on the other hand, dealing with the sub- jects on which their views were asked in a very selfish and opinionated manner, declining to be bound by the views of any majority, and threatening resignation if it was proposed that their views and practice were not to besanctioned! (Laughter.) I should wish these gentlemen to consider how they can reconcile such independence of action with the attainment of that esprit de corps which it is acknowledged on all hands is so much wanting in our profession. (Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, I have but to urge that we shall enter on these discussions with as much abnegation of self and individual pre- judices as human nature is capable of; that we shall respect the opinions of others, though we may differ from them, and that we should not fail to remember how many difficulties architects practising in the provinces have to contend with, and in some instances how impracticable they may find it to assimilate their practice in all particulars to ours in the metropolis. Nor is this all; we must remember that we have to deal with a public who will be too ready to resent and resist any rules of practice or professional etiquette which are not based on honour- able and equitable conditions. We live in days of energetic and constant competition: an incessant professional struggle, when there are almost as many architects as clients, and when, in this so-called land of liberty, every man is free to employ whom he fancies, be he builder, bricklayer, or architect; and being thus free is not likely to allow himself to be bound by professional rules which he considers one- sided, and which he will repudiate as a sort of “trade-union rule” to be resisted at all costs. A recent case, tried at Durham, bears strongly on this view, and shows how ready the public—and the clergy not the least so—are to dispute professional customs and charges; but, to my mind, the conflict- ing evidence given by architects at that trial was not the least painful part of the proceedings. (Hear, hear.) Since we attempted last year our first Con- ference, the American architects have held their fifth congress, and with a go-a-head rapidity and energy which belongs to that nation, but which, in spite of the gratuitous advice so freely given, I venture to think we shall do well not to attempt to imitate. (Hear, hear.) Their congress began at 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the 14th of November, and by the following evening they had read and discussed no less than twelve reports from the six chapters and committees of their Institute. They had an annual opening address from the President, three closing addresses from the Presidents of Harvard College, the Institute of Technology, and the late Master of the Leeds School of Art; two other practical papers, sundry discussions, and general Institute business. (Laughter.) The conditions under which we should start in such a race are thus described in a professional journal:—‘ Bound down by the swaddling bands of red tape, impeded by precedent, choked by apologies and compliments, blinded by the dust of prejudice, and deafened by the monotonous buzz of self-gratulation, the archi- tects of England have grown to be wearisome to the public” (Laughter.) Thus weighted, gentlemen, how could we compete in such a contest? Better far to assume at once the réle of the tortoise than attempt that of the hare. (Hear, hear.) I venture to believe that the American architects have found the question of competition quite as difficult to deal with as we may, and in the words of one writing on June 14, 1872. this subject, “it will be found that in the New World, as in the Old, competition is attended by selfishness, jobbery, and iniquity.” The most use- ful result of the American meeting will, I think, be found in the discussion on fire-proof construction, and in their recommendation “ of thick solid walls ; solid constructions in floors and partitions ; brick or artificial stone rather than granites, limestones, or sandstones; and oak posts rather than iron or stone columns.” Gentlemen, we do not meet under the brightest conditions. Our profession seems, as it were, to be under a cloud, to be affected by some un- known influences, as the weather has lately been by atmospheric ones: violently assailed both in the leading periodical of the country and in the most influential of the daily journals. We have, in addi- tion, members of our own profession publicly join- ing in this unjust crusade, and indulging in personalities of a most painful and uncalled for nature—(hear, hear)—and, though last not least, we seem about to have revived a sort of ‘ battle of the styles "—a feud which I at least had hoped was buried with that of the gauges. Whilst I think it would not be very difficult to show how unjust are many of the charges made in the former (the Quarterly Review), how unsound its reasonings, or how impracticable its suggestions, or to find a motive for the animus displayed in the latter, it will be well for us to consider calmly why at this par- ticular moment such a storm should burst over our heads, and why the works of British archi- tects, which certainly are not thus discredit- ably esteemed on the Continent, should be so abused in England. Is it to be attributed to the defective professional education of the English archi- tect ? to the want of examinations and a diploma to practice as in the legal and medical professions ? or to a higher standard of public taste requiring works of a higher class and purer taste? I doubt if to either of these causes is due the existing state of things; but if education is defective, that, I think, will soon be changed, for I believe there are abundant means now within the reach of the diligent student in architecture, not only with reference to the study of the true principles of all design, but to the artistic and constructive parts of his profession. I have great doubts whether the diploma could now be realised for our profession, and certainly I do not believe as yet in the great advance of public taste— (hear, hear)—or we should not see such monstrosities as now find favour and approval. But supposing the professional studies of young architects leave much to be desired, what shal! we say of the defec- tive taste and information of the self-constituted architectural critics, who sometimes take the world by storm through the vehemence of their assertion and the self-complacency of their dogmatism. This species of criticism by wholesale has lately been indulged in in an amusing manner by the author of the article to which I have already alluded. I hardly know whether to compare the writer's assumption to the discovery of a mare's nest or to the announce- ments of those quack doctors whose sole notion of argument is the indiscriminate abuse of the whole medical profession. (Laughter.) The writer assumes that modern architecture is bad because it is the work of professional architects, who make designs but do not execute them with their own hands, or under their constant personal superintendence as master masons or builders, and he fancies that the works of the Greek and Medieval designers were successful because there was with them no such dis- tinction between the authors of the designs and the persons who carried them out. Under our system he thinks there can be none of that real loving devotion to architectural fitness and beauty which he discerns, and correctly, in the works of the Greeks and of the Middle Ages; but really this distinction between past and present customs is a quibble upon words, or, as has been well said of this article in a celebrated weekly paper, “‘an analysis of the strange confusion of accredited criticisms and of original sophisms pertly dished up as novelties.” (Hear, hear.) There is nothing but an increase in the divi- sion of labour such as has taken place in other branches of art and industry, rendered neces- sary to a great degree by the altered condi- tions of society, and by the undue haste with which everything must now-a-days be realised, no time given for study or correction. If the details of our modern work are poor and weak, which is assuredly not always the case, it is not because the designer was not also a handicraftsman, but because he is a poor artist; and if the actual mason works like a carving machine, it is not because he works under a builder who is not the author of the draw- ings given to him, but because he wants the genuine artistic spirit—because he is fettered by trade union rules, seeking to do the least possible amount of work for his day’s pay, and that in the most careless and