BIG ENTERPRISE

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1928, Page 11

BIG ENTERPRISE

NEW ZEALAND ARCHITECTS. London, July 13. It is announced that the contract for the first section of a vast art silk factory for the British Selanese Company, to be erected in Derbyshire, has been let to a Sheffield firm of building contractors. The designs have been prepared by Mr. Hal. Williams, the well-known New Zealander —an Old Christ’s College boy—who is one of the leading engineers and architects in England. Associated with Mr. Williams is Mr. R. N. Vanes (late of Dunedin). The total cost of the scheme io given as well over £1,000,000, and the factory will actually have a floor area of some thirty-two acres. The building will have a frontage cf 1284 ft, in the middle of which will be a elock tower. It will be three stories high, and from the back of it, at regular intervale, will run six other buildings of three stories. These will go back 470 ft, and will make a huge building like a series of “T’s.” Owing to the nature of the ground, the building will be carried on concrete piles driven into the ground for a distance of 20ft. Each pile is 17in in diameter, and the factory will rest upon 6000 of them. When the factory is completed, the number of men and women employed in it will number no fewer than 15,000.

It may be recalled that Messrs. Hal. Williams and Co. designed all the special refrigerated cabinets in the produce haH of the New Zealand Court at Wembley, and they are nrchitects retained by the New Zealand Government to carry out the alterations to what will in due course become the High Commissioner’s office at 429. Strand,