May_1965 — Page 10

same subject, and its conclusions will be reported Copenhagen.

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The Australian conference will be held in Sydney on May 18 and 19. Professor H. J. Cowan, of the Uni- versity of Sydney, will deliver a lecture, in which he will survey the past development and the present pro- blems of industrialized building.

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On May 19, eight papers will be presented and dis- cussed. The early morning session is being conducted in association with the Australian Modular Society. will be devoted to two papers by Mr. K. McGrath, Dir- ector of Lend Lease Development Pty. Ltd., on the problems of modular standardization in the Australian context, and by Mr. J. Emmerig, Development Officer of C.S.R., on the documentation of new materials and components; this latter paper will discuss specifically the procedure worked out by the Building Science Forum's Technical Committee.

The late morning session will consider the relative merits of closed and open system building.

Two papers are to be presented by Mr. Ray Burkitt, Chief Tech- nical Officer of the Victorian Housing Commission, and Mr. Bruce Kennedy, of the C.S.I.R.O's Division of Building Research in Melbourne. The third session. will be devoted to the overseas potential of industrialized building. Mr. A. S. Vidal, of Clementsons Pty. Ltd., will discuss the design of industrialized building for ex- port, and Prof. Frank Woolard, an Australian now at Auckland University, will report on progress in New Zealand.

The fourth session will have two papers: Mr. Oswald McCutcheon, Melbourne architect, will survey the aes- thetic aspects of industrialized building, and the indus- trial designer, Mr. Edmund Dykes, will report on the prefabrication of interiors.

Glass-Spun House of the Future

AN American research engineer believes that the home of the future will be constructed by a glass filament wind- ing process. Mr. Ralph Burkley, of the Goodyear Aero- space Corporation, has produced a scale model of such a dwelling.

It is an oblate spheroid, or squat globe, and is built using a process now being developed in the aerospace industry for creating components for space missiles and containers.

Basically, filamet winding is similar to the method of threading a bobbin on a sewing machine. Instead of cotton, glass is used, and the bobbin is an inflatable fabric mandrel.

The shell of the glass-wound home would be design- ed to take all environmental loads such as stress from wind, rain and snow. Foundations would have to be de- signed to dump all static loads into the ground, i.e. the

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Mr. Burkley demonstrates house-winding

floor, the furniture and the movement of residents, would be supported by the ground or foundation of the house. The shell itself is of sandwich construction. First the inside shell is wound and coloured at the same time. Then the shell is covered with pre-formed foam or honeycomb insulating material, which would be design- ed to allow for wiring, windows and doors.

Final stage is again to glass wind, forming the out- side shell.

Overground Rail System Suggested

AN overground elevated rail system for Central London has been suggested as a possible solution to the city's traffic problems. The system would cost £18 million for a series of three six-mile loops.

The suggestion was outlined in a Paper presented at a London meeting of the Incorporated Association of Architects and Surveyors by Mr. C. W. Glover, senior partner of C. W. Glover and Partners. The system would rail- comprise a completely automatic elevated electric way running silently on rubber-tyred wheels in a series of adjacent, but not inter-connected, loops.

"The overground would provide rapid and safe transport for passengers and hand baggage at costs but a fraction of those of current fares", said Mr. Glover. "By having the overground in separately complete loops not exceeding 6 miles in perimeter, complication in ser- vice would be avoided and a standard fare of 3d, would be economic”.

The cost of one loop, including the two-track struc- ture, 24 three-car trains, each seating 300, 12 stations, all electric and automatic control equipment was es- timated at less than £6 million. It was claimed this figure represented about 17 per cent. of the cost of com- parable underground railway construction.

Architecture by the Square Yard

MANY people criticised the egg-crate and glass-box school of architecture generally, but in fact there were some examples, such as the United Nations and Seagram buildings in New York, which would be outstanding buildings in any age, said Mr. W. A. Allen, principal of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, in Wellington last month.

Mr. Allen had arrived to take part as guest speaker in the annual conference of the New Zealand Institute of Architects.

"There are good glass boxes and bad ones, he said. "Some of them are not done by architects. They are a kind of architecture by the square yard."

It had to be appreciated that in many cases clients wanted buildings that were fashionable in style. Archi- tects rarely had a free choice in deciding what sort of building should be erected. Architecture was beginning a long development in the scientific age, said Mr. Allen. Gothic architecture had 500 years to grow, but modern architecture had only been going 30 years learning how to adapt itself to a world of science and modern requirement.

Asked whether competitions or private commissions were the best for major public works, Mr. Allen said both methods were legitimate. "Competitions are a great way of getting a young man to show himself," he said. "At the same time a good client who knows what he wants and knows the quality of the architect he has chosen can make a choice with confidence.'

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Soviet Aid for Ceylon Precast Plant

THE Soviet Union is to assist in the construction of a large-panel housebuilding plant in Ceylon. The building will be erected in the district of Colombo, and the plant will manufacture large panels and ferro-concrete parts for assembling buildings at the rate of 35,000 sq. m. aggregate floor space a year.

Far East Architect & Builder May, 1965

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