THE OLYMPIA HOUSING EXHIBITION.
BETWEEN us and the last great Building Exhibition lie the black years of the war and the uneasy months thal have followed it. It would be unreasonable to complain that we seem to have made small progress in the domestic arts and sciences in the interval, for most of us were more concerned with defending or maintaining our homes than with constructing or improving them. One had hoped, however, that the New Ideas in fittings, furniture, and decoration which had begun to influence " the Progressives " before the war might have leavened the lump of the general public, and therefore trade, to a far greater extent than they actually have. There is still far too much of " Ye Olde Oak " flavour about the Exhibition; as also of the "Art and Inglenook" style, for it to be altogether encouraging.
There are, to be sure, some distinguished exceptions that in themselves make a visit to Olympia very well worth while. One such exhibit, indeed, is conceived with such imaginative
freshness, and is, with its ingenious orchestration of cool yet vivid colours, so typical of what the aesthetic illuminati of to-day are " after," that one wishes it might be acquired for one of our museums, complete and as it stands, to show posterity what 1920 knew of colour. Of c-cen.se posterity will not like it —at any rate not for a generation or two after the fashion has triumphed and declined—but those who feel the modem " colour-lust " will delight in it exceedingly, and must on no account fail to see the admirable " Pavilion of Colour."
The more serious-minded will spend their time amongst the various life-sized model houses, not unprofitably, as they are for the most part well planned, pleasantly proportioned, and ingeniously fitted up. Their materials are as various as their designs, and include brick, steel, concrete, wood, plaster, and asbestos.
rise do Terre construction is not represented by a full-dress house, but there is an interesting exhibit near the main entrance where sample walls, test-blocks, shuttering, and other plant may be inspected by those interested. The exhibitors have published a leaflet in which the remarkable results given by various Pine samples and structures under test are made public for the first time.
The Ministry of Health shows a full-sized house furnished exactly as in life but cut down to waist-level, so that the curious may wander about in it as in a maze, marking the points of its planning, yet without the discomfort and suffocation associated with the inspection of ordinary exhibition houses.
The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries shows a model garden full of " early produce," but the fishy side of the Department is unrepresented. There are not a few exhibits, however, which one would have imagined had even less to do with an " Ideal Home" than would have had a small but representative aquarium.
The fuel shortage has not been without its effect, and ingenuity has evidently been recently devoted to the extraction of the • maximum of heat from the minimum of coal, whether by direct combustion or through electrical or gas contrivances.
There are a number of embodied " New Ideas " in the various components that go to the making and equipping of a house which are not merely ingenious but also really practical, and it is hoped that reference may be made to some of these in a future
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