commercial offices special report
31
BUILDING PROJECTS
‘These upright features help to control thermal gain in largely glazed offices and add some architectural interest’
Matthew Collyer EPR Associate Director
of the spur in a triangular piece of land between the main canal and the spur, and is home to the company’s Pure Division. Containing a mixture of office space for over 200 people and specialist research facilities, it was opened in March last year. Phase three provides additional office space for more than
400 employees along with some discrete car parking. All three buildings sit directly alongside the canal spur, with
the sweeping, curved water-facing facades of Imagination House and the gentler curves of Concept House hugging the waterway, contrasting with the straight facade of the phase three office. Prior to the development, the spur – or ‘canal race’ –was an
unloved industrial relic, part of an old paper mill that closed around 1980. Always envisaged as an intrinsic part of the development,
the spur’s been dramatically improved through clearing and a sympathetic of mixture of hard landscaping and planting to soften the water’s edge and enhance the external environment for employees and visitors. These changes also help to main- tain and improve the area’s water-based ecology, building on the benefits of a natural flow created by a weir where the water flows down into a culvert running under Homewood Park. While each campus building differs markedly in form and
has its own reception, externally there is a strong sense of continuity in terms of materials and colour. All are clad in silver Alucobond, a metal-tray rain screen attached via Metsec to the concrete frame of the building. The long, glass facades of each building are punctuated by rows of striking vertical fins made of perforated metal.
“These upright features help to control thermal gain in
largely glazed offices and add some architectural interest, creating a nice rhythm along what are relatively long stretches of glass,” says EPR Associate Director Matthew Collyer. “They also bring together a nice complement of
colours, with the blueness of the low-iron glass, the mid-grey verticals and the silver cladding.”
Challenging location
The campus location presented some significant challenges for the architects, being very close to light industrial units, offices, a range of residential housing and permanently occupied houseboats on the Grand Union itself. Collyer says: “Imagination Technologies wants to be a good
neighbour and to create a high-quality development that‘s sympathetic to the surroundings. In response to its immediate environment, the campus has to be low-profile and is limited to three storeys high, while embracing natural assets like the canal and making them the focus for the development. “The western facade of Concept House backs onto the
main canal and although there are screening trees and planting, we kept that side of the building largely solid so that houseboat owners didn’t feel overlooked. To add visual interest and break the building up we gave that facade three sweeping, staggered curves. “The buildings have been constructed using a
post-tensioned concrete slab system enabling us to keep struc- tural floor depths relatively slender and squeeze the building
Continued overleaf...
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Above: Soft landscaping turns the canal spur into an attractive feature, with Concept House pictured on the left and Imagination House on the right
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