A Look at the old TVU Towers

 

 

Derelict tower on the former campus of Thames Valley University, Slough.

 

One of the former towers of Thames Valley University’s Slough campus gradually falling into dereliction. The campus was built around 1957 and was designed by F. Pooley, the Buckinghamshire County architect who also designed the magnificent Slough Library; we can only assume he was having a bit of an off day while designing the above.

 

Although designed as a college, the building bears some of the hallmarks of the grim office-structures of the period: cuboid shape, grid system of windows and dull panels, dull predictability masquerading as symmetry, and an general overall forgettable-ness that defines much of Slough’s mediocre facility buildings. And yet this ugly style proved to be a particularly fecund one: these towers’ DNA continues to be propagated forwards in the modern generation of office buildings– the graph-paper face of gridded windows and monochrome panels lives on in modern buildings such as the Urban Building on Windsor Rd.

 

The buildings have been abandoned for some time now, and are not long for this world, earmarked as they are for demolition as part of Slough’s ‘regeneration’ project. For once, whatever follows won’t have much of an act to follow.

 

 

Derelict former college tower, Slough (built 1957).

 

Another shot of one of the decaying, monolithic former Thames Valley University towers, which appears to have become a Travelodge for pigeons telling by the number of them perched on the ledges. Once, in its 60s heyday, it would have no doubt impressed the commissioning powers with its aura of technical progress and trendy Modernist references; now it’s a pigeon-pooed eyesore awaiting the demolition derby. A cautionary tale for today’s planners…