LIGHT AND AIR

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 134, 8 June 1937, Page 12

LIGHT AND AIR

BETTER FACTORIES

"Better factories, which assure better conditions for workers, give better profits," was practically the text of a recent address to English architects by Mr. A. Perry-Keene, one of the heads of a large-British motor-manufacturing company.

"We -vho study analytical figures," he said, "are very well aware of the tremendous effect of temperature and humidity and light upon the human being when we come to measure output. Invariably when the shops are warmed up .and the darkness is with us in the winter there is a direct and measurable drop in production, but so soon as the light days come again the rate of production rises. From that we have learned a lesson, and if any of you come to our works you will see the sort of thing that is go ing. on. 1 ought to explain that our works are a legacy of the.war period; most of the buildings were put up in a great hurry from 1914 onwards, and they were the standard type of that time. What we are doing is to put up over those shops a skeleton framework, 25ft high on the average, so as to provide light and air, and this has an immensity of glass area. We put up these mushroom tops above the sheds while the workmen are there, and the work is going on, and as soon as the new skeleton is finished we pull down- the roofs, walls, and scantlings of the old building, still with the men working inside, and we find that by this method of replacement we are able to increase output and secure better working conditions all round.

"We can visualise in the reasonably near future that office engineers, with their planned selling and their planned manufacture, which co-ordinates time to the last degree, will be wanting a new style of factory which allows of real co-ordination and synchronisation of the flow of material. Present-day factories are very deficient in this respect. The material cannot flow as it should, like a river with its various tributaries and without any jumpiness.

CO-ORDINATION OF AIMS.

"Looked at from the point of view of saying 'What service can I give to the world in order that I may -make a suitable living?' I cannot help thinking that architects and planners must admit to themselves what we engineers freely admit to ourselves, that we are on the edge of a new world. 'We have not yet really begun. We have only to look at what we have done in the last ten years."

During the discussion on the address Mr. L. H. Bucknell (president of the Architectural Association) said that what had struck him was the lack of understanding which seemed to exist between industry and architects. Industrialists seemed to look upon architects as curious, unbusinesslike, aesthetic people who put elevations or art on a building. They were not concerned only with appearances. They were very much concerned with planning, not only for a particular process but for a whole district, or even for the country. The old idea which the industrialist held of the architect was that he was a man to be called in 'to make the front of his factory look beautiful. His factory was' not always a good machine, and many modern factories were not good machines, either. They were not often planned for ultimate development, neither were they planned for their effect on their own local district or on adjoining districts or on the whole country; often they just grew; from houses or sheds they spread and spread, houses followed, and the countryside was ruined. That could not be called planning for industry. The industrialists must collaborate with the architect and give up the idea that his function was concerned only with elevation and style. Architects were concerned with knowing the industrialists' processes from the raw material to the finished product and its distribution, and they were much more concerned with that than with elevations or with what was so often called architecture.