Form and Fancy: Factories and Factory Buildings by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, 1916-1939
by: Skinner, Joan S.

Softcover. Liverpool Univeristy Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages. In 1916 Thomas Wallis founded a new practice, Wallis, Gilbert & Partner, primarily to collaborate with an American company in the design of factories to be constructed of reinforced concrete. Designing factories was not then popular among architects and many manufacturers regarded the employment of an architect a wanton extravagance. Wallis's move could be seen as a reckless gamble, but his and his partners' subsequent achievements suggest that his choice had been well considered; some of the best known inter-war industrial building - Firestone, Hoover, The Gramophone Company, Glaxo Laboratories - were their work. In Form and Fancy, Dr Skinner looks first at the biographical background of Wallis, at the history and organisation of the partnership he founded, and at the many factors that contributed to its reputation in the inter-war years. She then offers a perspective on architectural thought and activity in that period, and of the attitudes and influences on factory design. Designs by the partnership for over one hundred factories and factory buildings have been discovered and at the core of the book is a third chapter which analyses and assesses them. Dr Skinner concludes with an evaluation of the design philosophy of Wallis, Gilbert & Partners, the aim of which was to contribute to the successful pursuit of business by the companies that commissioned them.