E.P.S. CO-ORDINATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 42, 19 February 1942, Page 6

E.P.S. CO-ORDINATION

ARCHITECTS' VIEWS

Various aspects of E.P.S. activities came under review at last night's meeting of the New Zealand Institute of Architects.

One speaker said that better use of materials and labour available, for airraid shelter schemes could be effected by an improvement in the co-ordina-tion of the central organisation with local bodies.

Architects were designing shelters to conform to the regulations, said another speaker, but it was a slow job. After the owner of a building had received instructions about its use for shelter, an architect had to prepare a scheme, which was first submitted to the local body concerned. Next it went on to the Public Works Department's committee, which sent it back with perhaps a modified approval. The architect had to take the modified scheme or write in again about the matter. He had sent in about a dozen schemes—the first a month ago—but only two had come back so far, and these were in inconclusive form. He believed. that the Wellington tunnel scheme—to be any good—should have been started a year ago. An Auckland delegate said that the Government regulations were giving the architects headaches. Nobody seemed to have definite authority. He thought that some of the basements of big buildings would be death-traps. The ground floors would be better, as they offered better facilities for entrance or exit. OVERLAPPING. A member said that a serious defect of the E.P.S.. was lack of co-ordination of activities. Operations of various technical men, including architects, overlapped. In the recent air-raid shelter regulations nothing was provided for the guidance of local bodies. Each body had to grapple with the task in its own way. A whole lot of matters should have been done by the central organisation.. • Tha); was a field where the services of architects should have been utilised in the making of standard machinery for the operation of the regulations.