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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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…

 

‘Chalcott’, apartment building, Windsor Rd.

 

Ladies and gentlemen: a box! A classic example of 60’s low-rise flats. A combination of modernism and Scandinavian minimalism give us the style: little in the way of ornamentation, perfect symmetry and a design dictated by geometric order. Notice how the windows on the left 'reflect’ those on the right from a central line of symmetry, rather than just having the same window twelve times. Modernism had done away with the classic roof, so no passe gables or pitched roofs here, and no chimney– by the early sixties it was expected that new housing would automatically come with central heating, doing away with the chimney stack forever. This left the architect with the possibility of a perfect cuboid, which would have looked refreshingly radical when first built, but alas! the novelty wore off pretty quickly. 

There is no embellishment in the brickwork at all, and the only concession to superfluous ornament is the minimal white weatherboarding at the top; this classic combination of red brick and white weatherboarding would come to characterize lazily designed, generally crap housing from the sixties and seventies (for examples, see, er, everywhere). This example just about gets away with it by sticking to its theme of purity by simplicity and symmetry (if you’re going to be a box, then be a box, dammit!), and also because it’s really small; make it seven storeys tall or twice as wide, and you’ve got an eyesore. It’s the only building in this style on this road, so it again escapes censure by being something of an oddity; an estate full of these would be mind-numbing, but the odd one adds to the diversity of housing stock, not just in style but in provision–apartments don’t need to come in seven storey mountain blocks!