A Walk Around Winvale

 

 

Refurbished 60s apartment block, Winvale.

 



Winvale is a small estate of social housing built in the early 60s. It consists of several apartment blocks such as the one pictured and a row of terraced housing. They were built using a concrete panel system that allowed speedy construction (and which is why all the apartment blocks are identical in design). A project to refurbish the apartment buildings was recently completed; before, they were depressing pebbledashed cuboids in a state of decay that even graffiti couldn‘t hurt. The refurbishment added an insulating rendered layer on the outside, replaced all the windows and painted the buildings in various shades of exciting off-white, blue and grey. According to the website of Niblock, the builders who completed the project for Slough Borough Council, Class ‘O’ paint was used in the common areas– this is a special type of paint designed to be fire-resistant. The roofs were originally flat, but now pitched roofs have been added, probably for a combination of aesthetic and insulation reasons. 

 

The end result is surely an improvement for the residents, even if visually it simply looks like a transition from 60s-style social housing back to the 50’s style. The buildings still look appropriately drab and depressing, but a lot of this is due to the design flaws of 60s social housing, when it was still thought prudent to knock up ugly quick-build estates and fill them with needy people in a rush; estates that were designed to be built quickly from mass-produced elements that produced identical buildings, all aesthetically constrained so as not to be too ‘nice’– after all, it is social housing. Can’t be too generous, can we?! As if further evidence were needed for the slightly punitive aspect of social housing, the estate is cornered by the busy Windsor Road and by the mighty M4, which is a matter of yards away and whose din is inescapable.

 

Slough is returning to this style of social housing provision; current plans for a stretch of Windsor Road just round the corner from Winvale involve a series of large, identical apartment blocks that will merely be a 21^st century version of the above estate. Just like the situation in the 60s, foolish housing developments are being rushed through to avert a crisis with little thought spared for the future fabric of the town, a programme of hasty measures when what is needed is a sensible, national and regional strategy that builds for tomorrow, not for yesterday… hang it all, I’m starting to sound like David Cameron. Anyway, to conclude: never learn from your mistakes, you never know when you might need to commit them again.

 

 

Another shot of the refurbished apartment blocks at Winvale.

 

Repetition of style, orientation and even colour scheme in the newly-refurbished estate. Once again the ‘rules’ of estates have been applied: 'basic’ and 'generic’ are the aesthetic guidelines, and the denial of individualism betrays the lack of aspiration, identity and sense of worth that characterises social housing. The lack of private space shows the 'forced communality’ of life in estates: residents’ clothes are hung out to dry inches from the public pavement.

Fun fact: just behind the fence you can see by the furthest block is the M4, one of Britain’s busiest motorways. Enjoy!

 

 

New fence at Winvale, Slough.

 

As part of the mini-estate’s refurbishment, Winvale has been given a perimeter fence. You know you’re going up in the world when you get a fence! Not the grandest of boundaries– the green wire fencing looks like something you pick up at a garden centre– but once the greenery has grown in it should look better (hopefully the fence itself will be removed once the shrubs are established).

I can’t help but wonder if the fence is meant to keep other people out, or Winvale people in; in any case, it is largely cosmetic as everywhere on the other side can be accessed easily from the road. The biggest consequence in terms of trespass, then, is that the local kids can’t play across the path as they used to– a pity, as this was one of the few places in Slough where kids could play outside near to home without being squashed.