The autumn of 1939 witnessed the outbreak of the Second World War. As in the previous war, this affected the way industrial buildings were designed. At first buildings were rushed up everywhere to meet the demand of armaments and equipment supply. In the USA, some factories were built of great size such as the steel mills at Fontana, California to make steel for Liberty ships or the ford bomber plant at Willow run , in 1940 (figure 1). The U.S Navy commissioned Ernest Kump to build the monumental Ordnance and Optical shop in the San Francisco Naval base. Its slender steel frame allowed maximum use of glazing which flooded light in to the interior to aid the delicate operations within.

 

Many especially in the U.K factories were converted to differing uses, from cars to ambulances, from textiles to mortar bombs , their pre-war flexible designs allowing this change of operations. In The UK, demand for essential materials in the war effort encouraged the use of quickly constructed buildings, using lightweight steel structural elements, asbestos-cement cladding and with north light roofing, often “blacked out” or painted in camouflage. These corrugated asbestos-clad factories set the scene of many industrial estates for decades beyond.

In the USA by mid 1942, stocks of traditional materials had been exhausted by military demands. Economics and necessity meant that lightweight pre-stressed reinforced concrete and the new use of laminated timber for columns and roof structures came in to their own although at first nervously received by the builders. Newly developed resin glues and synthetic materials joined these materials in the goal of finding alternatives to traditional materials. In the USA, also, the blackout gave a boost to the “windowless factory” for a while as electrical lighting and improved ventilation alleviated problems potentially created in this environment.

In some of the wartime buildings quality was not a high priority, but post war standards began to rise and optimism encouraged some new design built factories. One notable example in the U.K is the Sigmund Pump Factory on the Team Valley estate, Gateshead (1948) (figure 2). The architects Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardell set out a horizontal emphasised building with a generously glazed office and works block, complete with Kahn style “monitor“ glazing in the roof.

 

 

Another notable building being the ill-fated Brynmawr Rubber Factory (1951), South Wales, (figure 3). This was the brainchild of Lord Verulam, who wished to inject life into a depressed area by creating a building embodying the highest ideals and optimism. He employed a group of recently demobbed architects, “Architects Cooperative Partnership”, and Ove Arup as engineer to create a

building roofed with nine thin shell reinforced concrete domes, leaving the main floor space completely uncluttered and illuminated by its elegant top light glazing set within the parabolic vaults.

 

 
In The USA post war surplus of capacity meant that some armaments factories were converted for the production of pre fabricated industrial buildings and housing, feeding on the now over supply of aluminium and steel. The firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), used their expertise in improved quality lightweight–steel sections to produce a prefabricated sophisticated exposed grid steel frame shed, which they started to export to Europe.

In mainland Europe, regenerating after the war, notable events include such projects as possibly Le Corbusier’s only foray into factory design. During 1945 in the war battered town of St. Die in the Vosges region of France, he rebuilt a mill for Jacques Duval. Corbusier stated “ Architecture is the correct magnificent play of forms under the light “ and he employed this dictum in the functional problems of a concrete framed five storey mill by the use of “Brise-soliel” , painted ceilings, a roof garden and some of the main production space put workers on a gallery.

 

 

 

In 1951, Francis Wylie in his published talk entitled “Industrial buildings” stated, “factory building is no longer the Cinderella of the drawing office, it has become industrial architecture. In 1952 two such designed buildings were widely publicised, the handkerchief mill in Blumberg Germany, by Egon Eiermann , (figure 4) and the Dynamometer building at the General Motors research building in Detroit by Eero Saarinen (figure 5).

 

Both displayed an exposed black painted steel frame with high levels of glazing, their streamlined aesthetic derived from the work of Mies van der Rohe .
In the USA, the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill took up this new “cool box” style and demonstrated it with several buildings in the 1950s including a building for H. J .Heinz &Co Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (figure 6) where they used the exposed black steel frame glazed with blue glass framed in aluminium.

 

This style arrived in Britain with the Processing building for Cooper Taber at Witham, Essex (1955) (figure 7). This building too had an exposed steel frame painted black, slender in appearance, with all other space apart from the services on the roof taken up with glass. This exposed, and possibly celebrated the machinery seen within. Was this the natural descendant of the Sheerness boathouse with its early-unrecognised exposure of the structural frame?

 

This generation of factory buildings and later ones benefited from the cross pollination of technologies from other industries. They could achieve this high level of glazing using new sealants derived from the car industry, and for the frames , the use of corrosion resistant “Cor Ten“ steel developed for railway freight wagons and heavy plant machinery. Further developments in reflective glazing and pre-cast concrete elements proved useful for 1960s buildings, and the advances in aluminium cladding profiled steel sections and plastic sealants encouraged these “boxes” to become even lighter.

In 1958, James Richards published “The Functional tradition” . In it, he expressed the fact that the prototype buildings of the nineteenth century had also prepared modern taste for their successors. He celebrated the efforts of the “pioneer efforts of the engineers” and the more orthodox builders of that time who served the needs of the trades and businesses. Now seeking consolidation after innovation, he felt that the latest generation of architects might aim at “such a vernacular” by perhaps emphasising the functional precedents.

 

This intended new vernacular turned out to be mainly imported, mostly from the USA. The “Architects’ journal” described them as “prestige pancakes”. These elegant sleek buildings, usually based on the Saarinen ideal were set in green field sites, usually landscaped, as in his original General Motors model. Often the companies were American as in the Cummins Diesel engine Company who commissioned one of these sleek boxes in Darlington, Co. Durham (1966), (figure 8).

 

 

Architects Kevin Roche and John Dinkledoo, inheritors of the Saarinen practice used a blend of Cor-ten steel and neoprene gaskets (the first time in the world) to create this sleek single storey highly glazed “pancake”. It sat amongst landscaped grounds, and internally physical demarcations were dissolved between factory floor and offices, a pioneering change for British industry. The factory had gone full circle, from country mill, to town and city factory and back to countryside again.

Contemporary with Cummins, building features such as masts, cables, bracing and exposed air-conditioning plant, often painted in bright colours became apparent. This style was to become known as “High tech”. Some architect-designed industrial buildings lent themselves to “architectural engineering”, i.e. structural elements being used more for effect rather than reality.

 

The Reliance Controls building Swindon (1965) was such a factory (figure 9). Designed by Norman Foster’s “Team 4” architect practice, it was a cheap and flexible “shed” for an American electronics company. It was noted by its exposed crisp cross bracing between the bays of the external steel frame, which sat in front of corrugated cladding or glazing panels. The architects admitted it was "just for visual effect only".

 

The late 1960s in Britain also saw two other factories of note. The first one designed by Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardell partnership, (of Sigmund pumps, 1948), was the new factory for The Bath Cabinetmakers Company (1968) (figure 10) in the south west of England. Here they exploited a lightweight tubular steel space frame to support the roof, enabling long spans and free floor space without heavy steel members.

 

 

The other building, also in Bath was a new factory for Rotark controls (1968) (figure 11). Here again use of the space frame enabled uncluttered floor space, but it was taken a step further by being carried through at roof level to give form to the exterior. The inclusion of glazing around the edge gave subtle lighting to the interior (figure 12) .The other point of note is that the entire roof frame was at first assembled on the floor and then lifted up into position.

 

In the 1980s, factories that took the notion of exposed structural members, both for visual and practical effect to further heights include. Firstly, Richard Rogers Fleetguard manufacturing centre at Quimper, Brittany (1979-81) for the Cummins Diesel Company where external masts and bracing rods .painted in bright red, created a structure free interior and gave the image of the structure almost holding the build up in mid air (figure 13).

 

 

Also by Rogers, the Renault depot at Swindon (1983) (figure 14) displayed overt Meccano like external structural members painted in vivid yellow, its cabling and pierced metal web acting out the form of a tent.

 

In the early 1970s and 1980s, clean lines and lightweight cladding materials became the usual face of industry. Earlier “cool box” examples expressing the face of corporate modernity were the IBM assembly plant (figure 15) and the Horizon (John Player) factory; both by Arup associates (figure 16). This model became the norm for many industrial estates and business parks.

By now, the sophisticated “shed “was becoming a standardised item. The architects, Michael Hopkins and partners were commissioned to draw up a prototype small factory unit, named “Paterae” (figure 17), a steel framed box with standard glazing that potentially could be bought “of the shelf “straight from the assembly line like a car. The Automobile industry that had spawned the dawn of standard factories could now be housed in units that were created like their own product.

 

 

Gillian Darley states in her book “Factory” , “By the 1980s Design magazine considered that the innovatory period of the sixties and seventies is coming to an end. Today kits of parts buildings designed by one time young lions …are, if not commonplace, certainly part of current conventional wisdom.” The attraction of an easy building formula meant that as Darley states “legions of disciples have adopted the same approach, not always with happy results.” Was it on the one hand becoming an architectural cliché or a popular modern vernacular? We should have to look to the ranks of industrial estates and business parks around the country to formulate our own opinion.

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