£16,000 Building For Brevet Club Memorial

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28800, 22 January 1959, Page 9

£16,000 Building For Brevet Club Memorial

Tenders for an imposing new building to be the headquarters of the Canterbury Brevet Club and a community centre would be called in March and construction should be complete by the end of the year, the club announced yesterday. The centre has been designed as a memorial to air crew members Who were killed in World War 11.

A site for the centre has been obtained on the corner of Wooldridge road and Memorial avenue. The estimated cost is £16,000, £7050 of which has already been raised by the club. The three-quarter acre site for the project extends for about 300 ft along Memorial avenue. The actual entrance will be from Wooldridge road, and space for off-street parking will be provided.

The centre has been designed by Messrs P. J. Beaven and Bill Lovell-Smith. Although joined at an angle, buildings -ar®, durtinqtly separate featured—archftecturiffly, structurally and functionally. The main hall will have 3650 square feet of unbroken floor space. It is kite-shaped in plan and its elevation shows glass on all sides with 23ft of glass from floor to ceiling at the apex of one corner. New-Type Roof The roof is described as a hyperbolic paraboloid, said to have been introduced in California several years ago. Its construction in the Brevet Club hall will take three layers of tongue and groved wood, running in two directions and nailed and glued at the edges. Tapered, laminated wood-edge beams will spring from two concrete buttresses set in a reflecting pool.

All walls of the hall will be full-height glass. Shade will be provided by swinging-type drapes that will also be used to make internal alcoves. A timber floor for the hall (there is dancing and other accommodation for 350 couples, it is estimated) will be 18in above ground level and the floor itself will have an 18in overhang outside. The wing building at an angle to the hall will have 4000 square feet of floor * space. Again, natural materials and textures will be used to advantage. Laminated timber beams running 150 ft, with 50ft maximum spans in places, will carry the roof. Supports for the beams will be 10ft high concrete piers lOin thick and Bft long. They will be set on various planes. In the centre part of the wing will be constructed a “garden of memories.” This will take the form of a conservatory with indoor growing and potted shrubs and plants. / Lighting for the garden will be through a roof dome which is intended to be symbolic of an aircraft navigator’s astrodome. Kitchen The modern kitchen intended to be included in the supper room has been laid out by a major city caterer in co-operation with the architect. The flooring of the supper wing will be brick tiles. There will be provision for doors to open on to paved terracing and lawns and gardens. Alongside the main building will be a reflecting pool. In the centre of this a 12ft high figure of an airman in full flying kit will be placed. The sculpture of the figure has been commissioned by the club from Mr Tom Taylor, of Christchurch, and is being done in white reinforced concrete. The airman will appear to be rising from the water on bird’s wings. It is intended to floodlight the statue at night.

MONUMENT TO AIRMEN

“Substitute For Fins”

Executive officers of the Canterbury Brevet Club said yesterday they would seek to have their proposed headquarters and community centre project recognised as the ’’monument’’ which would publicly indicate that the reconstructed Memorial Avenue highway was a memorial to air crew who lost their lives in World War 11.

The club intends to build the centre this year on a site, one of whose frontages is to the highway.

The suggestion has now been made that instead of money being put into “useless” objects such as fins, plots, shields, or roundabouts it should be used to aid the club’s project. “We have watched with interest the controversy on the fins and other types of memorial for the avenue and up to now have kept silent to see public reaction," said the president (Mr L. V. F. Etwell).

"We contend we have got the answers to what they are all talking about—to make sure that Memorial Avenue stays Memorial,” he said.

“We are definitely putting this up and no matter what type of memorial is going up we are going ahead. Money could be saved by the highway committee and local bodies contributing to the Brevet Club centre,” he said.