Hayes North Telephone Exchange

This was one of the first buildings to be completed following the creation of the Property Services Agency, established in 1972. The PSA had its antecedents in the Ministry of Works and earlier departments dating back to the Office of Works. It was created as an autonomous agency in 1972 after the Ministry of Works had been absorbed into the Department of the Environment. In this case the PSA worked with Gray Associates as architectural consultants. This remarkable structure makes an energetic use of precast concrete elements to create an over-articulated everything. As the AJ sardonically phrased it, ‘the designers have really gone to town on their precast concrete ‘language’, although seeming to get into a grammatical tangle at the corner of the low building on the left’. [1] The building is two linked blocks, one with equipment and the other with welfare rooms and offices. The mullions appear to act as structural columns and take on the characteristics of jointed timber, especially as they turn the corners on the lower block. The prominent upturned U shape elements at the top of the higher block house recessed vents to extract warm air. Although it may be regarded as clumsy, there is something endearing about this all-out assault on sensitivity. In another’s hands this might have approached a form of mannerist modernism, but here it is nothing short of lumpen thuggishness – the type that deserves a sort of condescending sympathy and ought to be loved.

[1] Architects’ Journal, 26 September 1973, p.721