PLANNING BETTER FACTORIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 3

PLANNING BETTER FACTORIES

IMPROVEMENT INCREASES PROFIT. “Beter factories, which assure better conditions for workers, give belter 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-manu-facturing company. “We who study analytical figures," he said, “are very well aware of the tremendous effect of temperature and humidity and fight 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 as soon as the light days come again the rate of production rises. From that we have learned a lesson, and it any of you come to our works you will see the sort of thing that is going on. I 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 immenity 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 buildings, 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 p anned manufacture, which co-ordin-ates time to the last degree, will be wanting a new style of factorv which allows of real co-ordination and synchronisation of the flow of material. . resent-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. “Looked at from the pomt of view of saying; -What service can I give to the world m order that 1 may make ® sultaoi « living?’ I cannot help UimH-ng that arenitects and planner? mist admit to themselves what ,ve engineers freely admit to ourselves tha. we are on the edge o. a new’ world. We have not yet really begun. We have only to look at what we haydone in the last iO years. During the discussion on the adth? >S ’4r I h t L ’ f H ‘ Bucneil ‘President of the Architectural Association) said that what had struck him X the IXxKi anderitandi "g which seemed to exist between industry and architects. Industrialists seemd to look upon architects as curious, unburinesshke. aestheti. people „, ho elevations or art on a building Thev were not concerned only with appearance., They were very much concerned only with appearances. Th l ” were very much concerned with planning not oniy for a particular proems but for a whole district, or even for the country. The old idea which the mdustrailist held of ti e architect wa! that r.e was a man to be called in >o make the tront of his fac.orv ioo beautiful. His factory was not alwavs 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 «ts distribution .and they were mu?h more concerned with that than wKh elevations or with what was so often called architecture.