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.

 

 

 

30 Bath Road, or Why I Hate Glass Balconies

 

Residential housing design conflating with office architecture– the building does not look all that different from many of the large office buildings it shares this stretch of the Bath Road with; the over-use of steel and glass coupled with the strips of grey panels and windows is the kind of thing you would expect in a building you push pens in, not one you sleep in (indeed, friendly-bombs walked past this building many times thinking it was some kind of office complex before the sight of people’s washing hung up to dry let slip that it was housing).

 

Glass-panelled balconies especially are all the rage now, usually constructed with grey, unpainted metal frames, bonus points if you leave the bottom exposed in a dubious attempt at some kind of structural expressionism. Friendly-bombs is not a fan: the use of glass on the balconies has the effect of making them seem cold and brittle, you can imagine the whole lot shattering with a loud thunderclap; they also don’t seem appropriate for our blustery climate.

 

The use of glass in balconies, banisters and balustrades has a further, unnerving psychological affect, that of giving the impression that there is nothing there. So we have panels installed for safety which at first glance don’t appear to be there and thus offer no instinctive reassurance– you have to consciously remind yourself not only that the barrier is there but also that it is probably, probably, not going to break. Glass has never evoked strength and security in the popular mind, and perhaps it never should.

 

Here the identically-sized and spaced balconies, one per flat, face onto the psychotically busy Bath Road dual carriageway, providing probably not the best view or the healthiest air, but actually offering the passer-by a good look in at the occupants. This is because these glass balconies are also de facto windows, offering inadvertent glimpses of the life inside, particularly at night when the flats light up in a kind of snooper’s advent calendar.

 

There’s something slightly depressing about the little hints of humanity you can see in each balcony– a plastic chair for the Summer, kids’ toys, some potted plants, the ubiquitous washing drying in the car fumes– that has perhaps something to do with the uniformity of the flats and the meagreness of the personal space, and the realisation that here, amidst the rush-hour noise, clamour and pollution are people trying to quietly exist in modestly-accessorized lives (Thank goodness the nearby Salt Hill Park provides at least a partial escape). And the more the building you live in looks like the building you wage-slave in, the less comfort both occupant and passer-by gain from it.

 

 

 

 

Cornwall House, High St, Slough

 

A distinctive little octagonal oddity at the end of the High Street. It was built in the early 80s and still displays that period’s penchant for tinted windows. It’s a quirky arrangement of set-back floors arranged in octagonal blocks, all built in a concrete frame, and provides a visual complement to the mildly Brutalist Slough Library building next door. From certain angles the windows reflect other parts of itself, providing a kind of hall-of-mirrors effect that enhances its visual complexity at no extra building cost!

After years as an office it is now being bafflingly redeveloped for residential flats. I worry about who will end up living here, as it’s situated on a thin wedge of land between the continuation of the High Street and the frenetically busy Bath Road– you can see in the pictures how the traffic converges around it. You could put up with this as a workplace– it’s centrally located, easy to get to, and you won’t be spending the night– but as residential accommodation it would be far from ideal. Nothing like the dawn chorus of rush hour to greet you in the morning! Also, in terms of air quality, any location on this part of the Bath Road must fall somewhere between the sulphurous fumes of Hades and Eric Cartman’s farts. Perhaps not the best place for flats?

 

 

‘The Urban Building’, corner of Windsor Rd and Albert St.

 

Formerly occupied by some very dingy 60s office blocks, this site now hosts a new office development trendily named 'The Urban Building’ (you can just about see its name in white letters right at the top of the building). Annoying, generic, common noun names seem to be in vogue at the moment– we already have 'The Curve’, 'The Centre’ and 'The Foyer’ in town, and the previous owners of this building advertised it simply as '123 Windsor Rd’. Quite why the owners opted for such unassuming names is strange, as the building itself is anything but: eight storeys and a wide frontage set right onto the road is as in-yer-face as you can get.
 

The building is young, under ten years old, and is therefore 'contemporary’– this can mean only one thing: glass, glass, glass, baby. We are confronted with a wall of glass, stretching up like the vertical water at Niagara Falls, glass along the sides, glass behind the portico. Light aquamarine panelling alternates with the glass, completing the illusion of a blue sky reflection even if the weather doesn’t comply. A nod to structural expressionism gives us the mesh-wrapped fire-escape stairs on the left hand corner and external metal support girders, while the steel-flap eaves at the top are reminiscent of industrial chic– warehouses, airports, factories. The 'columns’ (poles, really) provide a visual, structural aesthetic but not much else, the portico not being wide enough to casually walk down; perhaps a smoke-breaker from the offices within could huddle against the cold there, but not much else.
 

The drawback to the grid pattern of glass and panelling, in that particular greenish shade, is that the whole frontage looks like a piece of graph-paper or, for us kids of the 80s, the light green lined 'computer paper’ we used to use for scribbling at school. It evokes the paraphernalia and dull practice of office-work: spreadsheets, accounting, graphs, figures. The pleasing colour cannot save it from being another office-drudgery-building as generic as its name. Its overall message seems to be 'Back to work Jenkins, that’s enough daydreaming’. It’s trying so hard to be cool and sober for Business People and Business Practice that it’s forgotten to be any fun, and remains professional, but cold and clinical. Work should be prestigious and precise, but never too much fun, it seems.
 

Is it an improvement on what was there before? Certainly. Is it oversized and overbearing for its site? Certainly. One of Slough’s finest churches and churchyard is directly next door (the dramatic Victorian-Gothic St Mary’s), and some also-listed buildings at Upton Hospital a few paces up from that, but little attention was paid them– this very large glass rectangle was dropped in by a mouse-click nonetheless to appease the office-god. But this merely continues a proud Slough tradition, as the buildings it replaces were equally at odds with the neighbours.
 

Locals complain that the bloody thing is often lit up like a Christmas Tree at night, while during the day it appears dead and dormant; to my knowledge, there hasn’t been a single company renting space in it since the day it was built. Like Slough Borough Council it is expecting a kind of miracle of business growth to occur after the Crossrail transport project is finished, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Slough has a loooot of offices to choose from these days.
 

UPDATE: The building is no longer empty! KP Snacks are to move in and a café is to open on the ground floor, possibly even open to the public.

The former O2 office building at 1 Brunel Way, right next to Slough Station. For people arriving at Slough it is the first building they see on leaving the station, and what a welcome! There’s nothing like a filthy, rotting, abandoned office complex to announce, to any who had hoped to evade the reality, that you are now in Slough. With its central stairs and setback floor levels, all covered in mould and weeds, it looks like an Indiana Jones-esque forgotten jungle temple built by an extinct civilisation; as it happens, Segro (owners of Slough Trading Estate) owned the building and O2, the god this temple was dedicated to, is now based in more salubrious quarters along the Bath Road. If you look carefully you can still see the neon O2 sign in the centre of the building that used to light up in electric blue each night. Even more cynically, in the foreground you can see a banner advert for, er, O2.

The building is currently in the process of being demolished as part of Slough Borough Council’s ‘Regeneration’ project. It is to be replaced, of course, by another office complex. Let’s hope that whatever follows provides a more charming introduction to the town for visitors stepping off the train.