Working model: factory.FACTORY By Gillian Darley. London: Reaktion Books. 2003. [pounds sterling]14.95 Modest in scale but very handsomely illustrated, this must be the very best survey we have of factory buildings. It explores them first as images, Classically-clad in the eighteenth century, and then as functional structures, blackening black·en v. black·ened, black·en·ing, black·ens v.tr. 1. To make black. 2. To sully or defame: a scandal that blackened the mayor's name. 3. the industrial skyline. Then it views them as icons, seen by Le Corbusier Le Corbusier (lə kôrbüzyā`), pseud. of Charles Édouard Jeanneret (shärl ādwär` zhänərā`), 1887–1965, French architect, b. La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. as the 'reassuring first fruits of the new age'. Another perception sees the factory as a sales tool: a permanent free billboard, exemplified by Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax building, as well as by the Art Deco art deco (ärt dĕkō`; är dākō`, ärt) or art moderne (är môdĕrn`, ärt) factories on Western Avenue and the Great West Road, and by the workers' housing built by industrialists, from Bournville and Port Sunlight Port Sunlight is a village on the Wirral (in the North West of England). It was purpose built by Lord Leverhulme/William Hesketh Lever starting in 1888 for the employees of Lever Brothers soap factory (now part of Unilever). to Bata and Crittall. A concluding chapter peers into the post-industrial era, epitomized by the handsome Dyson cleaner factory in Wiltshire, completed in 1999, which the author describes as 'a brave stab at retaining manufacture in Britain, despite which, much of the production now takes place in the Far East'. For she notes that 'factories or tax-free assembly zones in the poorest countries of Central and South America South America, fourth largest continent (1991 est. pop. 299,150,000), c.6,880,000 sq mi (17,819,000 sq km), the southern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. and Asia emulate the worst conditions to be found in Victorian mills', and she compares the treatment of European industrial sites with the way in which in South Yorkshire South Yorkshire, former metropolitan county, N central England. Created in the 1974 local government reorganization, the county embraced the Sheffield conurbation and comprised four metropolitan districts: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and Sheffield. , almost every trace of former activity has been erased, 'as if to wipe away memories of mining and the bitter disputes that hastened its end'. Lessons emerge from this marvellously-told history. Plenty of industrial enterprises have been ruined by over-investment in expensive and rapidly obsolete buildings. The hero of this story is Sir Owen Williams Sir Evan Owen Williams (20 March 1890 – 23 May 1969) was born in Tottenham, London, England, son of Owen Tudor Williams and Mary Roberts. He studied engineering at London University, after which he was articled to the Electrical Tramways Co. in London. , who in 1930 designed the Boots factory in Beeston in Nottinghamshire, 'as impressive as ever and still in working use'. Book reviews from this and recent issues of The Architectural Review can now be seen on our website at www.arplus.com and the books can be ordered online, many at special discount. |
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