A Look at the Old Slough Estates Office Building

 

 

 

 

The Mayan temple meets the monolith: Former Segro Offices, Bath Rd (completed 1975, demolished 2014)

 

This building was commissioned to serve as the headquarters of Slough Estates, the company that operates the Trading Estate. It was one of Slough’s most distinctive buildings, and certainly the best example of the Brutalist style in the area. Completed in 1975, it arranged pre-formed concrete panelling and bronzed glass in an inverted ziggurat, with an unassuming, almost hidden entrance and an identical plan on all four aspects.

 

Uncompromising, immovable and unyielding, the daintiness of the early 20th century and the precise fussiness of Modernism well and truly buried under a thousand tonnes of blunt primitivism. There is no ornament, because here form is ornament– the building can only be assessed as a whole structure rather than by dwelling on any particular feature. Roof? Unimportant. Entrance? Unimportant. Surface? Unadorned. Orientation? Irrelevant. Impact? Instant and slightly scary, as Brutalism should be.

 

 

Some vintage shots of the building's construction in the 70s.

 

 

 

The building served as a headquarters for the company that controls the whole Trading Estate and was thus designed to be a class apart, drawing from the pagan rather than the classical or Christian; cathedrals are for choral singing and bake sales, ancient Brutalist temples are for genuflection and human sacrifice. The dark, impenetrable bronzed window space suggests the depths of a cave or the shadows beneath the dolmens of a megalithic structure, continuing the primal, primitive feeling evoked by Brutalism in general and the layered, prehistoric structure of this building in particular. Architectural Review described it as "the Modern Movement's answer to the Doric temple... the device of the oversailing storeys and the columnar peristyle give an impression which is rightly called 'monumental'. Such a building, you instinctively feel, could never die".

 

But sadly it is no more. In 2014 it joined so many of its Brutalist brothers and sisters in disappointing destruction, to be replaced by something bigger, and brighter and bolder-- something with more glass, of course-- and Slough lost one of its most iconic structures.

 

 

Taken during its demolition, the above shot gives a handy cross-section of the building, dispelling the myth that Brutalist buildings were all composed of solid concrete metres thick. Here we see that the outer structure is actually a shell just a few inches thick wrapped around the frame of the building, which is itself a lattice of steel-reinforced concrete slabs. Humble brickwork then makes up some of the interior walls.

 

A barely forty-year lifespan actually wasn’t bad for a modern commercial building– their usual lifespan is usually barely half that. Commerce hates nostalgia, and baulks at the idea of conservation– it’s all about tomorrow’s fashions, tomorrow’s glamour, associating business prominence and commercial capability with ever newer designs, concepts and chic. In the world of digital platforms, app development and smart space, Brutalism went out with the brick telephone and the milk float; a sad loss, in this new world of the intangible, the disposable and the indifferently-designed.

 

 

Three Picture Story

From the Friendly-Bombs archives: Three pictures tell a tiny story of life in the under-class

 

 

This short Victorian terrace used to stand on the Bath Road, at numbers 150-160. A few years ago Slough Borough Council decided to condemn the row to demolition, as part of a bludgeoning scheme of road-widening along the Bath Road. The houses were bought up with compulsory purchase orders, the occupants moved out, and then, as usual, the gears slowed down. During the lull in development, the buildings were let for five years (until 2009) to a social landlord, after which the council toyed with the idea of renovating the now-derelict houses to serve as temporary accommodation for Slough’s homeless but decided against it, saying that it wouldn’t be cost-viable. No compromise was offered.

 

 

With the houses standing vacant for so long, homeless people moved in; the front was boarded up, but you could see washing hanging in the overgrown back gardens. People were now living there, whether the Council had approved it or not. Despite this, and although they were still waiting for a final decision on funding for the road-widening, the Council decided to press ahead with demolition to ‘demonstrate the Council’s commitment’ to the traffic plan. Eviction notices appeared on the doors of the houses telling the homeless people inside to clear off.

 

 

 

For a little while afterwards you could see the aftermath of the eviction littered outside: bedding, simple furniture, clothes and in particular lots of shoes- the latter being particularly telling as amongst the pile you could see men’s, women’s and children’s shoes. Here we see these meagre accoutrements of lives on the edge now literally lying on the edge of the busy road, a testament to the layer of precarious lives that exist almost invisibly within busy, bustling towns and cities.

 

A little while later the buildings came down, but as of Summer 2016 there is no advance on the road-widening scheme or the promised residential redevelopment of the rest of the space; it simply remains as an overgrown, empty gap. There is no mention in the Council reports of what happened to the people who, for a while, called it home and were then moved on like human tumbleweed, and for many this will be a non-story; but it’s hard to let go of the feeling that, with the sight of peoples’ garments blowing down the street in the car-breeze, a sad little human episode happened here, and was swiftly forgotten. 

 

 

A Walk Around Waterside Grange, a New Housing Development Near the Canal

 

 

 

Waterside Grange is a new housing development built on a strip of land directly adjacent to the canal. Signs near the entrance trump that government‘s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme is available and that the scheme includes ‘affordable homes’ as well as shared ownership schemes.

 

 

The development is quite densely built, with much of the housing having three to five storeys, and not much area other than car parking space in between them. This small patch of green (above) with a few trees planted on it is the closest thing to a communal space, although in reality it is simply the leftover ground in between two sides of car park spaces. There are no benches or seats anywhere, but if the trees grow to a respectable height and are allowed to mature, then it might become something of a focal point in the future; if they don’t then, well, there’s somewhere for the dog to go.

 

 

 

(Above) Bad habits creep into the architectural design of this new housing development: a surfeit of red brick, tired vernacular references and hints of the unsubtle, defensive design of council estates. Here, a cheerless red-brick stretcher-bond wall replaces what would have been a wooden garden fence or verdant hedge in a more aspirational design. Contrary to popular speculation, brick walls don’t make for better security; ironically, thanks to their sturdiness they can be scaled much more easily in a way that a flimsy wooden garden fence can’t. The two-tone colour scheme of white weatherboarding and blue panelling on red brick, repeated across much of the development, seems lazy and uninspired in what is ostensibly a step-up from the ‘affordable’ developments of the past, referencing a boring, overused vernacular that would best left in the sixties where it belongs; it’s a shame that the development should wear its ‘affordability’ so clearly on it sleeve.

 

 

Overuse of tired vernacular clichés betray a kind of disinterested cheapness in the design of this affordable housing development: a forest of gables assaults the resident at every angle, from every angle. While the bad habits of rigid rectilinear planning have been avoided, the high density of the development gives it a slightly clustered, cluttered feel, with the sight of so many gables and similar features repeated so often in a small space seeming absurd at first, then boring, then annoying. It feels like British domestic house design simply gave up some time ago, and all we are left with is lacklustre photocopies of yesterday’s textbooks.

 

 

Tall buildings, narrow streets and a lack of front garden/buffer areas give the streets here a slight canyon-feel, a close-packed intimacy between neighbours that is unlikely to blossom into much of a community identity without communal or focal areas and that has been derived from the desire to put in as much housing as possible. Like all modern housing developments there are no corner shops, benches or real public garden space to commune in, and barely even anywhere leftover to park an ice-cream van.

 

 

This row of mostly detached houses does not face into the centre of the development as most of the rest of the buildings here do, instead they look outwards and onto the scenic canal that Waterside Grange is built next to. Differing brick-stock, inset upper-level and balcony, a smidgen of front garden and brown wood panelling channelling Scandinavian design lend them a chic smartness not found in the rest of the estate, and even the predictable gables seem fresher with the wide eaves, the panelling extending all the way up and a warmer tile style for the roof.

But squeezed in like sardines, the sides of the houses are lost to each other and to the sunlight, which sadly approaches from the wrong angle to help the North-facing fronts of these houses; perhaps the agreeable view of the canal makes up for this.

That said, these are still the pick of the bunch in this development. There is a definite step up in design (even if this row continues the maximum-density mantra by packing in as many as possible without breathing space) which makes me wonder if these are included as ‘affordable homes’ in the development, or has the bettered design been reserved for full market-rate sales only? Why do none of the neighbouring boring, generic red-brick ’n’ white weatherboarding (and almost certainly ‘affordable’) houses face the canal as these do, are they not worthy of the view too?

 

 

The red-brick neo-Georgian townhouse style reaches its most reduced and minimalist form. Usually associated with 30s council houses, the style is basic, familiar, competent and of course dull; it’s the digestive biscuit of domestic architecture (no, not the chocolate ones). With a desire for a communal area but no actual space devoted as such the neighbourhood kids play on the street, reclaiming the road from the cars (made possible by not having any ‘through’ traffic and by the development having enough corners to make fast-moving vehicles unlikely).

 

 

So all in all a fairly decent development, but with a few let-downs--on one hand some interesting housing at one edge and a cosy street arrangement, but a lack of communal space, over-density and a majority of disappointingly-designed buildings on the other. The development does well to combine family houses with apartments to bring some social diversity to the neighbourhood, but with so much of it being clearly limited in design to conform to the dismissive, stingy attitude to affordable housing the development as a whole struggles to escape its imposed mediocrity.

 

There are several building types on offer here and some are smart and competent, but many regurgitate lazy habits from the past, echoing decades of architecture reflecting social limitation. Traditionally, at the bottom we have the punitively-designed and visually grim social housing, at the top the optimistically-designed and considerately-approached private/speculative housing; Waterside Grange falls awkwardly in between, in that large middle band of aesthetically-capped better-than-social-but-still-not-great ‘affordable home/help to buy’ class. If people in social housing are supposed to deserve nothing, and people at the top everything, then those in the middle are deemed to deserve… a bit, but not too much; the inhabitants are enticed and cherished as buyers but disdained as those who still need economic assistance, and as always the architecture reflects this.

 

 

 

 

 

A Look at the Former Orchard County School (Latterly the West Wing Centre, Recently the New Arbour Park Stadium)

 

 

 

The Orchard County Secondary School building, latterly the West Wing centre (completed 1952, demolished 2016)

 

Originally built as the Orchard County Secondary School, what was more recently known as the West Wing centre was designed by the County Architect’s Department and completed in 1952; it was also included in Slough’s entry in Pevsner’s guide to Buckinghamshire. Past tense for this one: the building has been recently demolished to make way for a new football stadium. Constructed from a steel frame with brick panels, the functional 50s Modernism is typical of postwar school design: always the geometrically-precise arrangement of windows, always the flat roof, always the preponderance of rectangles. What distinguishes this design is the squat observation tower (complete with an antenna that was added in the 80s) which adds elevation and draws the eye; many a pupil’s first thought upon seeing it must have been “I wanna go up the tower!!”. The wall clock is a stylish addition, but had been neglected for many years (as is sadly the case with most public clocks these days) before the building’s demolition a few months ago.

 

As mentioned, the site is now home to a new football stadium that will be a home ground for Slough Town FC (aka the Rebels), who despite their modest history still enjoy the deep support of local fans, and have been a part of Slough culture since 1890. The club was previously based at Wexham Park stadium, off Wexham Road, (which has now been converted into a functions venue called ‘The Park’, yet another attempt to be pseudo-chic by referring to yourself as an unspecified common noun, see ‘The Curve’, ‘The Foyer’, ‘The Urban Building’ etc etc) but after disagreements with the landowners left the stadium and spent a number of years squatting uncomfortably on other teams' venues.

 

 

So the team definitely need a home, but whether this exact spot was the best place for it is debatable. Is it really ideal for a football stadium to be directly across the road from a crematorium and cemetery? Isn’t the traffic up Stoke Road already crazy enough? Wouldn’t a prime spot like that be better suited for wholly residential purposes? The Rebels could definitely do with a home ground, but football stadiums don’t necessarily need to be completely ensconced within towns; a similar plot up the Wexham Road, or one off the more robust Uxbridge Road may have been better. No curmudgeonly grouchiness intended: it is simply that the days when Slough could cheerfully fit cricket grounds and greyhound tracks easily within her borders are long gone, meaning every inch of developable space must be keenly scrutinised. But on the plus side, community sport returns to the town, hopefully in a way that will evoke the memories of the old Dolphin Stadium off the Uxbridge Road that so many misty-eyed old-timers recall.

 

 

Brownfield of Dreams: A Look at Idling Brownfield Sites

 

 

 

Build it and they will come: idling brownfield site, corner of High St and Church St

 

Now being used as one of Slough’s many impromptu car parks, this large expanse of land situated right in the lucrative town centre has been languishing in development limbo for a number of years. The planning permissions, currently collecting cyber dust on Slough council’s website, promise a massive multi-faceted, multi-storeyed development of retail, office, hotel and residential space, but not a brick has been laid.

 

This site, and a good few others like it dotted around town, are perfect examples of the problem of idling brownfield sites in urban areas where housing and other provisions are running at a shortage.

The swiftness with which the developers despatched the existing buildings (including some locally listed survivors of Slough’s Victorian old town) is inversely mirrored by the length of time it has taken to move this plan on; the scheme was granted permission back in 2008 but has since applied for extensions. While the economic downturn years may not have been an opportune time to start a big venture, there isn’t any wider economic excuse why work can’t start now; after all, major work is happening all over the town except in these blots of cleared, static brownfield.

 

Elsewhere in Slough, public parks are being built over to provide houses and cruddy office blocks repurposed without exterior redesign as residential flats, while sites like this sleep in the sun. But these sites are more than just eyesores and wastes of space, they dishearten the resident; familiar, cherished scenes and buildings are demolished in a blink of an eye with no timely successor, implying almost a kind of contempt for the local, whose town is hastily razed but seemingly not important enough to be replanted. Annoyance at wasted land is more keenly felt when insensitive plans are being enacted elsewhere, ostensibly because of a lack of housing space, while massive, empty, idling areas taunt the local like gaps in a six year-old’s teeth. They smother town character and identity and spurn the spirit of urbanism; it’s like living next door to a neighbour who flouts a hose-pipe ban, making you feel a bit of a sucker for accepting the withering of your own plants while they ignore the concerns of the wider world and keep theirs lush and wet. Time for local government to get tough?

 

 

 

ICI office building (now AkzoNobel), Wexham Road (built 1956-7)

Designed by T.P. Bennett & Sons and built over 1956 and 57, this distinctive office complex was built for the ICI paint company, which had already been resident at the site for some years. It is designed as a tri-radial star, with three prongs stretching out with green garden in between the northern wings and parking space to the sides of the southern wing. This unusual plan coupled with its modest height (only four storeys) places it at odds with the kind of office buildings being built today– generic glass and steel cubes extending ever higher and with a cynical view of character and design, dismissive of the aesthetic considerations of the passer-by.

 

Here its moderate late fifties modernism (a style that would very quickly become mundane itself) still retains a little elegance, warmth from the use of light brick and informality from the curved line where the wings intersect and the differing angles of the wings to each other (the building’s wings do not span a rigid equilateral triangle but more of an elongated Y shape). The unassuming entrance can just about be seen on the left of the picture by the garden area. If the building has a downfall, it is the sheer area around it dedicated purely to funneling in, checking and parking cars; even a good picture needs a decent frame.

 

 

Sun Shines on an Empty Parking Lot: Car Parks and Urban Sprawl

 

 

Sun shines on an empty parking lot...

 

The consummate space-eater, as Lewis Mumford might have described it, the car park is as much a feature of Slough’s mundane industrial landscape as the smokestacks of the old factories and the glass and steel facades of the office mega-blocks. The above shot was admittedly taken out of hours when there are fewer cars parked here, but the principle still stands: car parks waste a hell of a lot of space, covering large areas that may have seemed quite normal and expected as adjuncts to industrial spaces in the past, but are now becoming ever more conspicuous as wasted area as space in the town runs perilously short.

 

Car parks such as these enjoy peak usage for up to half of the day, usually Monday to Friday, and exist as redundant space for the rest of the week. They do not perform any other function. In the bird’s eye-view of the same space (below) we see that the space devoted to simply storing cars while you’re at work dwarfs the size of the actual buildings the parking lots serve, and they’re big buildings.

 

 

Such senseless sprawl makes for a flabby and discontent landscape, distended over larger distances than needs be, and visually mundane for local and visitor alike. The sheer lack of imagination involved in car park design adds to their misery; not a tree, bush, shrub or blade of grass interrupts the tyranny of tarmac (a good metaphor for the town of Slough, as it happens), and its completely-levelled topography makes for a disheartening and endless vista, a vast sea of asphalt without any hint of dry land to comfort the urban sailor.

 

Increasingly, modern industrial and business developments (and these days even some high-density residential blocks) are taking the wise and over-due step of raising their buildings on piloti and having the cars park underneath; this is simple sense and makes for an elegant solution to minimising the space devoured by the automobile. Older developments such as these pictured (1950's offices) rarely have such provisions, as they were built when space was relatively plentiful, and during an era of unchallenged economic growth and dogma; we look back at them now as unimaginable sprawl.

 

Incidentally, there’s no shame in the humble multi-storey; mundane and uninspiring they may be, but if done correctly (see this post, for example) multi-level car parks can be unobtrusive solutions to high-density parking needs. By using a subterranean level, a ground level and utilising the roof as more open-air space you can effectively triple an area’s parking capacity with only a single-storey building. Drivers (who tend to be habitual moaners anyway) may whinge at the extra time taken to park in multi-storeys, but this is a small price to pay compared to the benefits of relieving valuable space in an already crammed town; there’s certainly no excuse for business/industrial parking not to follow these templates.