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Note by Mr. D. J. Sloss dated 28th September, 1946.
The Committee that sat in 1940 was convinced that the only saving of the University site demanded a complete replanning and a re building of all accommodation. I think they were on good ground
but if the whole is not possible, a part may have to serve.
1. Since that date a new Science building has been built - too small, in fact, but giving to 2/3 of the amount of space that will be needed in reasonable development in the coming ten year period (assuming that the Report is accepted and implemented).
2. The Chinese Library is satisfactory, though extensions of the book stack are necessary, but this should not be a very expensive job. The Chinese School is recent, but it is badly planned. However it would give us necessary accommodation for Oriental Studies (Chinese,
Eastern History, etc.).
3. The medical laboratories for Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Biochemistry are inadequate and are badly built. They are 80 placed against a cutting on the hill-side that no architect, so far, has been able to show how they could be extended. They are stout enough to last for another generation but they require a complete reorganization of their space. The existing buildings could be replanned and used, as I think, for a generation, for Physiology, Biochemistry and with some ingenious replanning, Pathology, which means that only a new Anatomy building of this group must be re-built. Near the Anatomy laboratory stands a hopelessly badly designed and built experimental surgery laboratory. This, I think should be pulled down, its site extended by cutting and on the bigger site, a new building for Anatomy, Histology and Operative Surgery should be built.
4. The Students Union - a complete wreck when I saw it last is on the part of the site which, it was suggested, should be surrendered for municipal extension; so also is the main building which house the Library, the Arts classes, the Administrative Offices and some Engineering Laboratories. The Union is much too small and, I think, must go. The main building is solid and would last for a very long time but it is badly planned, wasteful of space and gives no accommodation that is specially suitable for the purposes for which it is employed. However, if the engineering laboratories were cleared out of the basement, accommodation, not particularly good, could be found for Arts Classes and for Social Science and, I think, for administration. This would mean a reconstruction of the part of the site we had thought should be surrendered.
5. This means that accommodation for the Students' Union must be found elsewhere. This I shall recur to later.
Accommodation for engineering teaching is now a more modest problem, if the University agrees to concentrate on Civil Engineering and Architecture and to give up the teaching of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. These are on ground outside the old University site, in proximity with the new science building, an Engineering workship and Engineering laboratories (mainly for "prime-movers"). Between them is an area which long has been regarded as the proper site for an Engineering laboratory. It would accommodate lecture rooms, library, hydraulics laboratory, testing laboratory and would form part of a coherant scheme of which the science block and the existing engineering laboratories and workshop would form part.
/6.