Building a new parliament will be no easy task

THE EDITOR: There are four variations of this tale, and only one can be told if time is short — so goes a saying of some tribe or people; in this letter to the Editor, my comment as a citizen on the issue of the construction of a new parliament will be stated.

To construct a new building for the parliament is a wonderful thought. It indicates a degree of confidence by whoever decides on such a course, but if such a confidence is not underlain by the true intellectual and artistic capacity to bring to fruition such an undertaking, the result will be a reflection of the same. The first consideration is the positioning of such a structure. The inner city of Port-of-Spain is no place for a new parliament; if anything, the present building should be left to dominate the area, as a matter of good taste. The ideal location would be some distance away, that the new building would establish its presence without being affected by those already there. Such a site would be the hill overlooking the city, and the proposed building should face south, thus viewing over the island.

Two thousand and five hundred years ago, the people of Athens built upon a hill overlooking their city a series of structures that represent the pinnacle of ancient western architecture. One of the best known structures is the Parthenon, the building of which took place in the time of Pericles, and was conceived of by the architects Ictinus, Callicrates, and Carpion, under the supervision of the sculptor and genius Phidias, who created within the great statue of Athena Parthenos, which stood 40 feet high. The dress and ornaments were of gold, and the parts not thus covered were of ivory. The length of the Parthenon is 228 feet, breadth, 101 feet, and height, 66 feet. It is surrounded by 46 columns, each 34 feet high and in diameter at the base six feet one and a half inches. With manpower, animals, and primitive cranes, the Athenians built the Parthenon and its associated structures on the hill some 250 feet overlooking their city. It would have been far easier to have built them on the flat land, but their sense of situation and proportion prevailed in the construction of what they called “the altar to beauty”.

The responsibility of constructing a new parliamentary building, once assumed, is no smiple task. The gratest difficulty will be in achieving a design that will be simple, yet elemental in its appearance, as befits the housing of the great organ of the Republic, where the monumental rights of the citizen are defined into law. Many are the effects that may be expressed, that the resulting style may be distinctive, and yet represent the traces of the immense architectural heritage of the New World peoples; Olmec, Aztec, Toltec, Inca, Maya, and the great workers in stone who created Tiahuanaco and Sacsayhuaman Effect of the East Indian, African, Syrian and Chinese cultures can also be incorporated, (though Syrian architecture is not distinctive or remarkable in any way).

Since the establishment of the style of architecture developed by the French-Creoles, and which is the only truly Trinidadian style ever developed, all other construction has only been utilitarian, in simple Geometric style. It is very doubtful if the local architects can handle the conception of a new parliamentary building. Indeed, it would be a wise move to hold an art competiiton, advertised internationally, especially in Latin America, for artistic conceptions of the building, and then the engineers and architects would take over. It is hoped that it will be built on the hill.

SURENDRA SAKAL
La Romaine