Slough industrial estate joins the ranks of listed post-modernist buildings
COME, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough. But avoid the industrial estate off junction 14 of the M25, because it is now Grade Ii-listed.
The Mckay Trading Estate is one of 16 additions to Historic England’s register of protected buildings, joining the stately Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery as a shining example of Postmodernism.
Slough first developed an image problem when Sir John Betjeman wrote his poem in 1937. Things went from bad to worse when Ricky Gervais chose Slough Trading Estate as the bleak setting for The Office.
However, according to Historic England, Mckay’s is a thing of beauty as “the building, forecourt and car parking define the space and represent an urban piazza”. The effect is an “evocation of traditional European squares”, with architectural flourishes that nod to Le Corbusier. Designed by John Outram, the warehouses and office space were completed in 1978 and now house several freight businesses servicing nearby Heathrow.
“It was a bit of a shock to find out we might be listed,” said one employee. Do workers feel transported to a European piazza when they arrive each day? “It’s an industrial estate. It certainly doesn’t feel like Venice.”
Also listed is Aztec West, a business park off the M4 near Bristol, which boasts “a Hollywood glamour, accentuated by elements of Art Deco design”.
Sixteen post-modern buildings have
‘These are scarce survivals of a really influential period of British architecture’
been added to the Historic England register, recognising a style that had its heyday in the Eighties.
Duncan Wilson, the chief executive of Historic England, said: “Post-modern architecture brought fun and colour to our streets. These are scarce survivals of a really influential period of British architecture and these buildings deserve the protection that listing gives them.”
The Sainsbury Wing has been granted Grade I status. It was opened in 1991 and designed by the architects Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown. The design replaced an earlier, more radical vision by Ahrends, Burton and Koralek, which the Prince of Wales famously described as a “monstrous carbuncle” and which was refused planning permission.
Charles Jencks’s Thematic House, an “inventive and ingenious” west London home conceived by the architecture critic credited with fostering Post-modernism, is on the list. The interiors are based around the seasons and the passage of the sun and moon.
The new additions to the register include a number of housing schemes, four of them in London’s Docklands, and two buildings in Cambridge: Judge Business School and the Katharine Stephen Rare Books Library at Newnham College. Truro Crown Court in Cornwall has also been listed, with the architects praised for “creating a place which is at the same time humane but reflects its sober purpose”.
The listings were approved by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Britain’s first exhibition devoted to Britain’s post-modern movement opens at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London next week, billed as an exploration of “one of the most inventive periods in British architectural history”.