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Notes
Shoddy Standards of Today

“New Zealand today is full of shoddy goods, shoddy houses, shoddy cities—and the implements we use, the very tools of trade, are shoddy, too,” said Professor C. R. Knight. senior professor at the Auckland University College School of Architecture, addressing the inaugural luncheon of the newly-formed Design Guild in Auckland recently. More than 200 people enrolled in the guild, which is intended to furnish a forum for the exchange of ideas of people wishing to improve the conditions of life in its visual requirements.

“Just here and there,” Professor Knight continued. “we find something gracious—a Selwvn church, a modern home, a piece of silver, or even a garden spade—but they are hard to find, and I must be pardoned if I wish that we had not fallen into the evil of making anything do for the job of living.

“We have many things in New Zealand of which we are proud. The glorious country-side, the mountains, lakes and beaches, high wages, short working hours, universal education—all commonly called the high standard of living. But can it be a high standard of living when good design is rated so low?”

The excuse put forward for bad design and shoddy goods, said Professor Knight, was that they “would do the job.” ignoring the neglect of inspiration given to man by doing that job perfectly and the enjoyment he received by doing it well.

“If we start to do a job in a slovenly manner,” he said, “making do, the time comes when the whole fabric becomes repulsive. It has become a collection of ill-considered, unsatisfactory units, and working with it is ineffective.”

One of the tragedies of urbanized living as created by the industrial revolution was the divorce of art from living—the worship of material functionalism at the expense of aesthetic emotionalism. Generations had grown up educated to-believe that art was something to enjoy with leisure, playing little part in the everyday life of the individual. The failure was in not realizing that true gracious living was a unification of the material and aesthetic.