Architecture and the care of the Mentally Deficient
- Author:
Clough Williams-Ellis.
[Mr. Clough Williams-Ellis is no doubt known to many of our readers by his delightful book, entitled ” The Pleasures of Architecture.” He is particularly well-qualified to discuss the question of Institutional architecture, as much of his finest work has been done on public buildings, among them buildings for purposes of education or for the care of the sick. He built, several years ago, tho Girls’ Home of the Princess Christian Colony at Hilden- borough, Kent, and before that, the Cumnor Rise Home, near Oxford. He has built schools in Ireland, a Hospital in North Wales, and a Nursing Home in Surrey.
Recently he was entrusted with the adaptation and extension of Stowe House for the purposes of a Public School, and anyone who has seen his dignified and harmonious buildings will not doubt that he understands the modern requirements of life in large communities. At present, he is also engaged on the conversion of Dartmouth House into a Club for the English Speaking Union.]
None but a pessimist can regard the care of the feeble-minded on a large scale as anything but temporary. The whole point of the movement is not that it alleviates, but, so far as feeble-mindedness is a disease of the body politic, that it provides a permanent cure. Things are as they are to-day because no effective measures have been taken in the past, and it is only by tackling the problem radically now that we can look forward to improvement in the future. There is no one who does not wish to make the lot of existing mentally deficients as tolerable as may be, but the real urge to reform is not primarily compassion for the present afflicted. It is rather a determination that the incidence of the scourge shall be more and more restricted in the future by wise action now, until recruits for the tragic army of defectives are sporadic and accidental only, and not predestined by heredity.
It would seem, therefore, that the more thoroughly the thing is tackled in our time the less need there will be for any permanent provision in the way of homes, settlements, and centres ; we should think of such institutions as emergency camps rather than as permanent features of our civilisation. In a more enlightened future there will, of course, be adequate provision for the segregation of such feeble-minded children as may still be born. But as mental and bodily health, eugenics, psychology and education, and the arts of living generally, are better appreciated and more thoroughly applied, mental efficiency will have been brought within manageable “bounds, and what is now an appallingly wholesale affair could then be tackled in detail.
If this view is true and its realisation possible (if, alas ! not probable), we should be better advised in segregating and treating the maximum numbers of cases in our generation, even if less adequately than we should wish, rather than at the same expenditure demonstrating on a smaller scale how perfectly the work should be done and the patients should be housed, were it economically possible, and were public opinion more determinedly behind the movement than it is at present.
This is a hard saying for architects, because the implication is Army huts, not almshouses. Asked to plan any rural institution?and, of course, the mentally defective should be housed in the country?the architect’s normal reaction is to think of charming old almshouses he knows of, and ” colleges for poor gentlemen,” and the like, part of whose charm is their permanence and the mellowness that time has given them. One thinks of evening sunlight slanting into grassy quadrangles of rosy brick, of shadowy vistas through arched gateways and cloisters, and such-like vanities?very good in themselves, very honest architecture, very charming to the visitor, but perhaps not of any great help to the feeble-minded inmate. That it is some help one cannot but believe, or lose one’s faith in the power of beauty and in humanity, even as exemplified in its less successful specimens. In the perfect state, all buildings, for whatever purpose, would be beautiful; in the more enlightened states even to-day all State and public buildings are at least seemly?that certainly being the impression that one brings back from Sweden and Holland and from many parts of Germany.
Seemliness is probably all that we can aspire to in any project for the housing of defectives?seemliness, cheerfulness and convenience, none of which, fortu- nately, mean costliness. The same thing applies to a large extent in the building of modern elementary schools, where the rapid changes in pedagogics and curricula in recent years, as well as new ideas as to health, have made many buildings, admirable when erected a few years ago, already obsolescent. In view of these rapid changes in function, authorities very wisely hesitate to commit themselves to elaborate, permanent, and costly buildings, lest further discoveries, or even changes in fashion, should prove them unsuitable for a new regime. In schools for normal children there is no question whatever that beauty in their surroundings does make a difference, and it must be the task of the architect to achieve beauty without the usual help of permanent materials, large masses, and unbroken wall surfaces. We have got to get used to a new scale and a new proportion for windows, where the buildings are to be used either by children or the sick ; and it is not easy to reconcile the new demand for large windows with the old building traditions of our country. The health value of fresh air was discovered by the last generation : we have now discovered, or at any rate believe we have discovered, the equal importance of sunshine, or at any rate of “sky-shine”; and the advanced doctor or schoolmaster almost demands a glasshouse for those in his charge?a glasshouse, moreover, the walls of which are removable. Even private clients have already begun asking me to glaze their windows with the new glass that allows the valuable and certainly fashionable ultra-violet rays to pass through unobstructed. It was said by some student of child welfare?surprisingly enough, a German, if I remember rightly?that the worst home was better than the best institution. Clearly, he was thinking of institutions as they used to be, where the children were lumped together in a great battalion, probably woie a uniform, Were certainly identified by numbers, and were disciplined and schooled, fed and tended ^as far as they were tended) in the wholesale manner so efficient from the Governors’ and the financial point of view, so disastrous if the final product of the institution was what it was judged by.
Happily, we have come to recognise that children are individuals, that they are separate persons, more individual, more diversified even than grown-ups, and we have learnt that to get anything approaching reasonably satisfactory results they must be individually studied and differently and appropriately treated. It Would seem that they were intended to grow up in families they have done so time out of mind?and there is no doubt something in them that demands, at any rate, an approach to family life, without which they cannot and will not develop normally or satisfactorily.
That, I take it?possibly in a less, possibly in a greater degree?is true of defective children and adolescents, and indeed of defective grown-ups, so far as they do grow up. This means that the highly convenient, highly economical and highly detrimental battalion system is inapplicable to the feeble-minded? feeble-mindedness being infinite in its percentage and variety. It means some attempt at reproducing ” families,” contrived as far as possible within the wholesale framework. One sees the perfect institution, or rather the institution that might be reasonably hoped for, as a colony of little houses pleasantly grouped about the main building, where would be the central kitchens and Probably central dining halls, the laundries, workshops, schoolrooms, etc., etc., as well as the administrative offices.
This all sounds very grand and ambitious; but as we hope the provision ?f such institutions is only a passing phase of one of the dangerous ages of ?ur civilisation, we must clearly either build them frankly for the emergency in temporary or semi-temporary fashion, or so arrange them that they will conveniently and usefully serve some other communal purpose that we have in view when their immediate object has been achieved ; or, lastly, we should make use of existing buildings at present unemployed or not usefully employed, that can be adapted at no great cost.
Anyone who goes about the Country or studies the advertisements in Country Life or on the back page of The Times will have been struck and Perhaps depressed by the number of large country houses now in the market, and apparently unsuccessfully seeking buyers. Considering what they originally cost to build, and still more what they would cost to reproduce to-day, the prices that many large country houses can be bought for is, from the owner’? Point of view, quite heartbreaking. Building costs have increased enormously, like the other costs of living direct and indirect, so that as an architect one feels pleasantly surprised to find anyone proposing new construction when old Work can be picked up at such derisory prices. Where it is urgently necessary that funds be made to do as much as possible, and where the exact location or architectural character of the house is not of the first importance, one can scarcely conceive of anyone building when he might buy. One is comforted to know that good architecture, whether ancient or modern, always seems to command its price, or still, at least, find a good market.
There are, however, plenty of large houses, charmingly situated and with every sort of amenity, but having no particular architectural character, that can be bought for little more than site value, and that would seem to have all the chief attributes necessary for the centre of a colony. I chance to have been concerned in the conversion of one or two old country houses to public uses, and if carefully selected it is surprising how readily they lend themselves to the fulfilling of functions quite different from those for which they were originally built. Partly, of course, this is because they were not very well adapted for their original purpose, and therefore not too highly specialised as would be a modern house.
What do we find are the usual amenities and services of an ordinary country mansion? Its site has usually been chosen with care, its aspect has been thought of, and its prospects are probably pleasant. It is set back from the main road, but has one or two good approaches. Drainage and water-supply are there, gardens and trees are there; probably there is a large stable-yard, grooms’ and gardeners’ cottages, all of which can be more or less conveniently made to serve as outside living quarters. There is probably electric light already installed; and the old kitchens and service quarters, which would be absurdly large for modern methods and the reduced staffs of a private house, would probably be quite adequate with a little alteration for institutional cooking. Probably there is already a large laundry and estate workshop, and public rooms as large and many as would be needed for dining and recreation.
The most skilfully devised settlement founded on a new site would take many years to mature into anything approaching what can be had almost at once in an old setting such as that described. Given a nucleus, given existing old buildings, established gardens, and old trees, anything built with a little care and imagination would fit into the picture and produce an ensemble entirely attractive.
The land-owner’s present embarrassment would seem to be the public institution’s opportunity. Even the additions to the original fabric?which I conceive of chiefly in the form of separate buildings ranged around its old stable-yard and about its garden?would probably be of light construction and probably in one storey, for which the special sanction of the local authority might be sought and obtained. Since the War a bewildering number of expedients have appeared on the market, patent and otherwise, for economical building? some to stay, some to disappear again. As the outside walls of a house account for only a relatively small portion of the total cost, a slight economy in the outer walls makes sadly little difference to the whole cost of the building, if its internal fitting-up and finishing, its roof, etc., are normal and the same.
To make any real difference between temporary and permanent building one needs to adopt a different outlook and a different standard throughout, and there is no one system or method that can be recommended as solving the problem of how to build cheaply. It is partly a matter of the current market prices of the various materials, but chiefly a question of what it is decided can be left out or done without. If those in closest touch with communities of the feeble- minded and those who best know their requirements and the things that are most important for their welfare would specify them in the form of a ” Priority List,” it would be the task of the architect to use all his ingenuity and resources so as to give them the maximum of what they wanted for the minimum of cost.
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