A Walk Around the New Developments on Railway Terrace, Part 2

 

 

 

‘Rivington’ apartment building, Railway Terrace 

 

Taken from ground-level, it only needs a tilt of the head to turn the side of this new block into a Kafka-esque vision of modernity endlessly collapsing in on itself [*slap* get a hold of yourself!].

The building somehow has a conforming, bureaucratic feel about it that seems to evoke modern council offices rather than residential units, and the terracotta cladding doesn’t provide the warmth one associates with the medium, mainly because it has been squared off, smoothed over and cleaned up too much, arranged into a precise grid around precise, humourless windows– it’s less terracotta warrior, more terracotta spreadsheet.

 

Perhaps the best thing one can say about it is that it isn’t as intrusive as its neighbours, particularly the ‘Lexington’, its sister-building directly next door, which is at least twice its height. Marketing pictures of the inside of them show open-plan apartments in ‘neutral’ colours, wall-to-wall laminate flooring, evenly-spaced down-lighting for that showroom feel, and oodles of Scandinavian-inspired furniture; it’s like the occupants have died and gone to a cold, soulless Ikea heaven. It’s the perfect habitat for the moneyed, mobile yet ennui-ed and culturally-insecure commuter-belt crony. Teriyaki dinner at six, homemade Tanqueray cocktails at seven, widescreen plasma tv sports at eight, joyless safe sex at nine, power shower and contemplated bathroom suicide at ten; up at seven for commute, repeat as necessary.

 

 

Corner turret of ‘The Junction’ apartment building, Railway Terrace

 

A rare bit of eccentricity in one of the new, multi-storey apartment complexes behind the station (you can see the building on the far left in this post ). No prizes for guessing what this feature is supposed to evoke: they do say an Englishman’s home is his, er...

 

One would think that the only interesting feature of this dull building would be prominently placed, but it isn’t, in fact it is tucked away in the crawl space between this building and its close neighbour the ‘Rivington’; this just contributes to the suspicion that it somehow got into the blueprint by accident. Eccentricity just isn’t charming if it’s hidden.

 

This project was completed by Barratt Homes, whose name has long been mocked as a kind of hallmark of mediocrity, so it was surprising to see the feature there at all. It’s a shame then that the rest of the building doesn’t contain any more visual wit, as the block as a whole is just another generic, uninspired mass that’s not too distinguishable from the dire Holiday Inn building a few blocks over; at least they’re keeping to a consistent character, I suppose, even if it’s a poor one.

 

 

Upwards view of the corner turret of ‘The Junction’ apartment building

 

Like so many new developments in Slough, this building has been christened with a generic common noun in a trite attempt to make it seem cool and exclusive (we already have ‘The Curve’, ‘The Centre’, ‘The Urban Building’, ‘The Foyer’ etc); in this case, it’s ‘The Junction’, which just makes it sound like a troublespot on the M4. Quite what it’s a junction between isn’t clear– its use as commuter bait makes it a terminus, its inclusion at the end of a row of such buildings makes it an adjunct, its hulking form greeting people stepping off the trains at its foot makes it an introduction, but not a junction.

 

The idea is presumably to acknowledge the developers’ wish that it be used a junction between London, where the commuters work, and Windsor, where they would like to pretend they live. Much of the marketing material that comes with the Railway Terrace developments is overly-emphatic on Slough’s proximity to Windsor: Windsor sites are namedropped as leisure activities, Windsor shops, pubs and restaurants are proffered as the prospective resident’s cultural options. Don’t worry, just a few minutes to Windsor!

 

Strangely enough, not as much mention is made of Slough as these are mostly luxury flats (or are at least luxuriously priced), and the kind of people the developers wish to attract aren’t the kind of people who would want to be seen dead being associated with “Slough” (from the Old English “Slo”, ‘a place of mire’). As they’re right next to the station, they can be in Windsor in a trice, so quickly in fact that they might be able to convince themselves that they are somehow from there. And having spent the day in the company of a real castle they’ll be able to come home to this development, complete with its own turreted reminder that even though they technically live in Slough, their upwardly-mobile and sniffily-sensitive souls actually belong over there, in Royal proximity and name-droppable social safety.