ENG-1952 — Page 31

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1952

decided that the construction should be undertaken by the Public Works Department in association with Pro- fessor Gordon Brown, M.A., F.R.I.A.S., A.R.I.B.A., A.A.-Dip., Professor of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, and that Professor Brown should in particular be entrusted with the duties of producing the sketch plans. During the course of the year Professor Brown visited the United Kingdom for consultation on various technical aspects of the project, and at the end of the year he was engaged on plans for a building or group of buildings to include, inter alia, an auditorium for two thousand people, library and reading rooms, museum and art galleries, lecture rooms and committee rooms. It is hoped that the plans for the new hall, which it is intended to build on the land provided by the central reclamation scheme, will be ready for consideration early in 1953.

Among important public works started during the year was the new reservoir at Tai Lam Chung in the New Territories, plans for which were officially approved in July. The completion of the first part of this new reservoir is expected to take about four years while the complete scheme will take about seven years. This new water reservation scheme is planned to provide an additional one thousand million gallons of water storage capacity, and it is hoped that the rationing of water, which has become a regular and unwelcome feature of the winter months, will at least be alleviated as soon as supplies from the first section of this scheme are available.

In July also, after delays due to the late arrival of materials and plant, work was begun on the building

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