SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Innovative both structurally and socially, the Brynmawr Rubber Company factory was demolished in 2001 despite a long and hard-fought campaign to save it.

The factory’s origins lay in the attempt to regenerate the economically deprived region of South Wales by exploiting its coal reserves and employing local people.

Completed in 1951, the factory was designed by four members of the Architects’ Co-operative Partnership, which had been founded on the lines of the famous Barcelona firm Gatepac by Architectural Association graduates in 1939. The factory offered them the chance to put some of their radical ideas into practice, chief among them a belief in architecture as a force for social change and an emphasis on team working that saw them liaise closely with engineers. This collaboration was most evident in the design of the factory’s main, over 7,000m2 production hall, the large undivided area of which was made possible by Ove Arup’s and Richard Jenkins’s daring use of concrete shell construction for its roof. This consisted of nine thin concrete domes – the largest in the world at the time – arranged in three rectangular blocks which from the outside resembled giant eggshells.

The factory was socially progressive too, with a single entrance for management and workers and shared canteen and welfare facilities. Economically, however, it quickly proved a failure and in 1954 it was sold to Dunlop whose speedy erection of a separate office block undermined the architects’ egalitarian intentions.

Robert Elwall
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