Imagine a building that is a garden, or a garden that is a building

Project Insight

In 1986 Ready Mixed Concrete Ltd decided to build a new international HQ and training facility on its land near Thorpe in Surrey. However, creating such a large building in green belt land was a huge challenge.

Project Idea

There were three existing buildings on the site, 18C Eastley End House, its adjacent stable block, and some distance away The Grange, an Arts and Crafts house looking over a lake formed from RMC’s earlier gravel workings. By disguising the largely single storey accommodation as a garden behind a red brick perimeter wall (following the pattern of Thorpe village) and laying out a real garden over both the roofs and the courtyards, we succeeded in winning planning approval on appeal.

Project Design

This building is at once audacious, fantastical and extremely rational. Whilst accepting the corporate hierarchies in the brief, the building successfully challenged workplace norms.

Whilst the Eastley End house was grandly refurbished for the directors, staff and visitors enter along an axis of water elements, through a circular fountain entrance court, with a swimming pool open to the reception area and a view of the lake beyond. Training areas, the staff restaurant, squash courts and a gym also share this concourse.

Each of the historic buildings is given an individual courtyard setting, with the new offices forming the physical enclosure to each court, the cladding of white enamel and steel in conscious contrast to the red brick of the outer wall. This means that all the work areas open directly through full height doors onto the courtyard gardens – making a wonderful work environment. From here, stairs lead up to the roof which itself is a continuous garden, bounded by yew hedges in containers that provide sun-shading to the spaces below. Roof top ventilators to the kitchens and labs are dressed as giant chess pieces in a nod to Lewis Caroll.

The super insulated heavy weight construction with largely natural ventilation made the building an early sustainable exemplar.

Later Life

Completed in 1990, the building continued to function effectively for many years. A doubling of staff numbers led to some of the facilities being converted to work areas. After RMC was bought by Cemex in 2005, its purpose as an international HQ was no longer required and it was eventually sold for redevelopment. After a successful campaign by the Twentieth Century Society to get it listed, a new purchaser, Eden Retirement Living, brought a compelling vision for the complex as a later living community, and is now giving this wonderful synthesis of buildings and landscape a new lease of life for the 21st Century.

Awards

• Green Building of the Year Award Commendation

• Financial Times Architecture at Work Award

• RIBA National Award

• Civic Trust Award (inc. Steetley Special Award)

• Grade 2* Listed