The Construction of the Royal Festival Hall Discussion on paper by Mr. E. Roland Hole and Mr. F. C.

Thanking the lecturer and opening the meeting for discussion the Chairman said they had had a most interesting lecture. Mr. a’Court had thrown out a wealth of ideas and the most intriguing one was that as concrete was such a readily used material we were stretching it to the limit to which it could be used. He wondered if that was so, for when they could produce a light weight concrete which was strong there was a whole range of other uses which had not yet come into being.

Mr. Walter C. Andrews, who will take office on October 11th, as President of the Institution for the Session 1951-1952, represents the younger generation of engineers. He is of the twentieth century and is in fact the first President of the Institution to have been born after the close of the nineteenth century. At the time of his birth in London on March 1st, 1902, Queen Victoria had been dead just over a year and with the new reign had come a quickening in the development of new ideas in every walk of life, and in none more marked than in engineering. The age of steel and concrete had dawned, and six years later saw the foundation of the Concrete Institute, afterwards renamed the Institution of Structural Engineers.

TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTION The Council has been kind enough to permit me to use the columns of the Journal to communicate with you regarding the Institution’s Benevolent Fund, and in this connection I approach you as Honorary Secretary of the Fund and not in my official capacity as Secretary of the Institution, for on the subject of the Fund I feel there can only be a personal approach.