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Architecture
Praising concrete jungles James Dunnett admires the classic works of the engineer-turned-architect, Sir Owen Williams Designers of motorways may not gen- erally be very popular, and for that reason are not very well known: they keep their heads down. But some of them have also conferred less controversial benefits on the public, such as the late Guy Maunsell, whose firm was responsible for the Ham- mersmith and Westway fly-overs in Lon- don, but who had previously originated the famous Mulberry concrete floating har- bours used in the Normandy landings. Another was Oleg Kerensky, son of the last would have been better-known to the pub- lic as its designer than those who are responsible for the present Tunnel, not only because the result would have been visually more spectacular, but also because he was a flamboyant character. Attention is currently focused on him again because some of his more visible works face demoli- tion: the proposed widening of the Ml to four lanes in each direction poses a threat to his original bridges with their Art Deco streamlining and faded graffiti reading pre-Soviet prime minister of Russia, who was responsible for the M2, M32, and M5 motorways, but was principally known for his long-span bridges.
Perhaps the doyen of motorway design- ers, who ought to be better known to Fleet Street because of his architectural work there, was Sir Owen Williams (1890-1969). Williams designed the M1 and the so- called 'Spaghetti Junction' M5/M6 inter- change in Birmingham with its associated elevated sections of motorway, as well as the offices of the Daily Express in Fleet Street and of the Mirror nearby. Had his 1960 proposal for a tubular steel Channel Bridge been built, there is no doubt that he `Marples Must Go' and `US out of Viet- nam'. In addition, the relocation of Mirror Group Newspapers in Docklands has prompted plans for re-developing the Mir- ror site, which have been approved this week by the City planning committee. Williams certainly had a spectacular career, reminiscent of the heroic engineers of the 19th century. In 1912, at the age of 22, he was senior designer for the Trussed Concrete Company (the beginning of a life- long obsession with the material), and was responsible for the design of the vast six- storey concrete Gramophone Building near Heathrow, which still stands. In the first world war he designed concrete boats as well as a flying boat (presumably not in concrete), becoming an associate both of the Institution of Naval Architects and of the Royal Aeronautical Society. By 1921, he was chief engineer to the British Empire Exhibition, designing the structure of Wembley Stadium and many other sub- stantial exhibition buildings, for which he was knighted at the age of 34.
Appointed in 1929 as both engineer and architect for the new Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, intended as the most luxurious in London, he was replaced when the struc- ture had reached first floor level, on its becoming apparent to the promoters that he intended the ballroom interior to resem- ble 'a great whitewashed barn'. There can be no doubt that if his Dorchester had been completed as designed, with its robust modelling and bull-nosed corner windows, it would have made a much more virile con- tribution to the London scene than Curtis Green's insipid re-interpretation of it.
Not dismayed by this setback, Williams went on to complete a large number of architectural commissions during the 1930s, including the Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham, the Daily Express building in Fleet Street with its black Vitrolite curtain walling (the first use of this cladding method in Britain, earning it the title of `the Black Lubyanka'), the immense Boots `Wets' and 'Drys' factories in Nottingham, and the Empire Pool, Wembley. For his Tunnel Cement Laboratories in West Thurrock in 1932 he designed shelving sys- tems, bookcases, and even desks, all out of concrete.
He also designed smaller works, such as the large picture window for his friend and supposed compatriot Lloyd George who, on a visit to Hitler at Berchtesgarten, had been most impressed by the view the Fiihrer could command through his expan- sive sheet of glass, and wished to emulate it in his own house in Surrey.
It is perhaps surprising that the Modern Movement in architecture, with its empha- sis on expressing the construction of a building, did not throw up more engineer- architects of distinction. Williams shared with the structural innovators an acute sense of the plastic potential of concrete which he exploited vigorously with his faceted surfaces, column capitals, and plan forms — whilst at the same time tackling the human dimensions of architecture.
Indeed his use of concrete became almost anachronistic in its heaviness. His answer to the great weight of long spans in concrete, as at the Empire Pool and the post-war BOAC Maintenance Headquar- ters at Heathrow, was to counterbalance it with a further great weight — the huge concrete fins that form such an impressive rhythm along the side of the Empire Pool. Although he concentrated increasingly on motorway construction after the second world war, he did undertake two major architectural commissions — the eight acre BOAC Maintenance Headquarters of 1950 and the Daily Mirror Building.
The Mirror building is always regarded as disappointing because Williams, preoccupied by work on the Ml, delegated much of the detailed architectural design. However his conception for the building showed that he was responding to architectural develop- ments since the Express building 30 years earlier. The printing halls were sunk into the ground, generating some structural engi- neering of Piranesian grandeur and allowing the offices above to be treated as a free- standing slab of considerable strength and scale, even though cluttered at ground level by inconsequential additions. The new build- ing for the site designed by Sir Norman Fos- ter envisages a return to the blocky and arguably less interesting massing of 30 years earlier. Though the Ml bridges, with their distinctive faceting, reflect Williams's per- sonal attention, it is regrettable perhaps that this was at the expense of the Mirror, which otherwise might have constituted a major landmark of post-war architecture.
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