East India Dock House, former Financial Times Print Works, Poplar, London

Summary

The former production and printing works for the Financial Times, 1987-88, by Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners. Converted to a data centre in the late 1990s.

Description

The former production and print works for the Financial Times, 1987-88, by Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners. Converted to a data centre in the late 1990s.

STRUCTURE and MATERIALS: the building has a steel frame which is clad in vacuum-formed aluminium panels at either end, and has glass walls to the central sections of the principal elevations. The glass walls are constructed from 2m-square panes bolted at their intersections to external cantilevering armatures which are attached to aerofoil posts; tension cabling takes much of the weight of the glass. The posts support pairs of perforated I-beams, and hold the transverse trusses that take part of the load of the flat roof; internal columns running along the spine of the building take the remainder of the load.

PLAN: the building is located on the south side of East India Dock Road (A13) within the walls of the former docks. It is rectangular in plan, c145m by c50m and of three storeys, with the principal elevation, intended as a full-height display cabinet for the printing presses, facing the passing traffic on the north. On the south are projecting pods containing fire escapes, a central stairwell, lifts, and the main entrance.

The aluminium-clad end sections of the building were initially used for paper storage and despatch. The central, glazed section is divided laterally with two 18m wide clear span voids on either side of a 12m ‘service spine’. The northern section held the presses; the southern section held an independent frame providing the structure for offices. The conversion of the building to a data centre involved inserting floors into the void, raising the ground floor, inserting lowered ceilings and further subdivision.

EXTERIOR: the building is characterised by the uniformity and regularity of the structural system of prefabricated aluminium panelling and glass walling, and its palette of muted grey tones. The aluminium clad end sections, which are unequal in length with quadrant corners, consist of vertically fluted oblong panels that sit between horizontal rails. These sections are entirely blind, and doorways and ventilation louvres follow the pattern of the cladding. The glazed central sections have aerofoil fins at 6m centres with projecting armatures and cabling expressing the structural system. On the south elevation the stair tower pods, which are oblong on plan with semi-circular ends, stand apart from the building and are clad in flat aluminium panels. The central two of these have bands of glazing and frame the central entrance: a modern high-security door.

INTERIOR: the spinal wall that originally enclosed the print hall is believed to survive. All other internal finishes and fixtures are related to the late-1990s conversion of the building to a data centre: pursuant to s.1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that these are not of special interest and are excluded from the listing.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: there are a number of detached pods in the grounds of the building that hold plant and services, and form gatehouses.

History

Advances in printing technology in the late 1970s triggered the dispersal during the following decade of most national newspaper companies from Central London’s Fleet Street. Editorial and printing no longer needed to be undertaken in the same place, hence printing facilities were relocated to larger, cheaper premises. The Financial Times (FT) was one of the last to leave its offices, in the purpose-built Bracken House (1955-58), designed by Sir Albert Richardson PRA. A long-standing champion and patron of good design in architecture, and in industrial architecture in particular, the Financial Times’ new facility had to reflect that ethos.

Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners was commissioned to build the new facility, on the recommendation of Colin Amery, who was then writing a weekly architecture column for the FT. The project team consisted of Paul Grayshon, Nicholas Grimshaw, Douglas Keys, Rosemary Latter, Frank Ling, Christopher Nash and Wolfgang Zimmer. The architects for the interior of the building were the Robinson Design Partnership and J Robinson and Son were responsible for the structural engineering.

Sir Nicholas Grimshaw CBE (b1939) is a prominent contemporary English architect, specialising in industrial and commercial buildings. He was educated at Wellington College, and from 1959 to 1962 studied architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art, before winning a scholarship to the Architectural Association. He won further scholarships to travel to Sweden in 1963 and the United States in 1964. He graduated from the AA in 1965 with an honours diploma and joined the Royal Institute of British Architects two years later. Upon graduation he entered into a partnership with Terry Farrell which lasted until 1980, when he started his own firm. In late 2004, Grimshaw was elected as president of the Royal Academy of Arts. His most recent work includes London's Waterloo International Railway Station and the Eden Project in Cornwall. A handful of buildings with which he has been involved are listed, though only one from the Partnership itself: the Print Works and offices of the Western Morning News, Plymouth, 1991-93, which was listed at Grade II* in 2015 is currently the youngest building on the List. Grimshaw’s father was an aircraft engineer and his great grandfather a pioneering civil engineer; these influences are apparent in his architectural oeuvre: his buildings express the characteristics of the British High Tech movement of architecture, where engineering, construction and the expression of function shape buildings’ aesthetics and form.

The brief for the Financial Times required a facility to be ready for use within a year, and it was to house two state-of-the-art printing presses, as well as publishing and production offices, bulk paper storage and despatch areas. Despite this tight timeframe a bespoke solution was developed, and time was saved in making a ‘loose-fit’ building; the specification for the offices and services had not been worked out when building started, so a void was created into which a separate three-storey structure was built, which was subdivided and fitted out as requirements became clear. The structural method, a steel frame with prefabricated cladding panels relates to Farrell and Grimshaw’s Herman Miller Factory, Bath (listed Grade II), in 1976-77. The structure of the glazed elevations was an innovative solution, with the flush internal surfaces effective in maintaining a clean, dust-free environment for the printing process. In preparation for the bid, Grimshaw and his team visited a number of printing presses around the country and were immediately impressed by the vast scale and ‘architecture’ of the printing machinery. Grimshaw persuaded his client to celebrate this massive technology by putting it on display, within the massive ‘shop-window’ that would open up the mechanical process to traffic. The concept of creating a theatrical display of the activity within a building on its road-facing elevation had been made earlier by Grimshaw and Partners at the Oxford Ice Rink, Oxford, in 1984. Likewise, a spectacle of the printing process was made in Owen Williams’s Daily Express Building, Manchester, 1939, in which full-height glazing enclosed the street-facing print hall; the geometric panelling and curved corners of the building too, are proto-East India House.

The building officially opened on 25 October 1988, with Margaret Thatcher starting up the presses. It won ten awards including the RIBA (National and Regional Awards), 1989; the Civic Trust (National and Regional) Awards, 1989; the Royal Fine Art Commission/Sunday Times Building of the Year Award (Joint Winner), 1989; the London Docklands Development Corporation's Decade of Achievement Award, 1991; and it received a Principal Structural Steel commendation. The prestigious Principal Financial Times Industrial Architecture Award was not achieved, though the building is unlikely to have been considered as it was owned by the awarding body.

The facility was designed with the capacity to produce 70,000 copies per hour, and it was the intention of the newspaper that it would take contracts for printing other publishers’ work. Poor economic conditions meant this did not happen, and after seven years the Financial Times abandoned the building and outsourced its printing to the West Ferry Printers, a joint venture between the Telegraph and Express newspaper groups. The contents and fixtures of the building were stripped, and it was sold and converted for use as a data centre. This process involved inserting floors into the printing hall, raising the ground-floor level, inserting lowered ceilings, the blockage of despatch vehicle entrances, further general reordering and subdivision, and the addition of plant to the roof. The steel fins have been over-painted, and translucent film has been applied to the northern glass wall. Additional detached service buildings have been added to the grounds following the stylistic principles of the main building.

Reasons for Listing

East India Dock House, the former Financial Times Print Works, 1987-88 by Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural interest: an impressive and characteristic example of High Tech architecture, a movement in which Britain led the way, by (Sir) Nicholas Grimshaw, one of its leading proponents;
* Aesthetic value: a streamlined and clean-lined building that boldly expresses the building's structural system and internal function;
* Design interest: for the giant ‘shop window’ of the printing hall, at night an illuminated billboard, forming a prestigious, landmark building;
* Technological innovation: Grimshaw employed an existing proprietary glazing system in a sophisticated and innovative manner, and developed a new method for vacuum-forming superplastic aluminium;
* Historic interest: part of the architectural legacy of the British newspaper industry and of the architecturally pioneering Financial Times newspaper, which had previously commissioned Grade II* Bracken House in the City of London. It was officially opened in 1988 by Margaret Thatcher starting up the presses and won several major architectural awards.

External Links

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