Willis Corroon Building Sights

BBC Four Collections - archive programmes chosen by experts.

For

this collection,

Janet Street-Porter has selected

programmes about Post-War Architecture.

More programmes on this theme, and other BBC Four

Collections,

are available on BBC iPlayer.

In the 1960s, many provincial English towns decided to change their image

from market town to metropolis.

The experiment was not a success.

There is no plan nor dream of the future, only the nightmare.

And then, in the middle of Ipswich,

a view of what might have been.

The Willis Corroon Building, designed by Norman Foster

for 1,200 insurance workers in the middle of the '70s.

The curtain wall of tinted glass

is made of hundreds of individual sheets,

bolted together, sometimes at different angles, reflecting

a surreal image of the city that surrounds it.

The free-flowing contours

are reminiscent of the famous vases designed by Alvar Aalto in the '30s,

and influenced by the glass skyscrapers of Mies van der Rohe

a decade earlier.

The new technology of the '70s

made it possible for Norman Foster to realise this vision -

creating an amoebic island in the centre of Ipswich

which flows to the edge of its site

like a drop of water on a glass slide.

What is wonderful - as you come into the building,

you realise the implication

of this free form and what it could mean

in terms of making a new work space.

The idea that you bring in light, not only through glass,

but through the use of colours - the idea of landscape.

The idea of yellow being the sun, green being the grass.

And it's making an internal world for work,

which could be wonderful and very healthy and bright.

Twin escalators lead up to the two vast trading floors,

with room for up to 500 office workers on each level.

But there is a vast open space in the centre of the building,

that allows the light to pour in from the roof and the glass walls.

This building was built when I was an architecture student in London

in the '70s.

For me, what was very exciting about it was the fact that

one can take a very simple, abstract idea

and make it into an office building -

it would have been maybe less eccentric if it was just a house

or a pavilion.

But the fact that it was a work space, which defied

the normal idea of an office space

was what makes, for me,

this building very important and very exciting.

Despite the open plan, it is surprisingly quiet.

These globes are for the PA system

which relays a deadening blanket of sound

to mop up the noise of over 1,000 computers and telephones.

And when the level of daylight is too low,

hundreds of discreet ceiling lights are activated.

This is the democratic office of the future,

imagined by the early modernists

but not fully realised until the '60s and '70s -

an open plan in which the only walls are those made

by the workers themselves out of filing cabinets.

But what I really like about the inside

is the way the glass wall makes the outside world

both close but oddly distant.

Only on the ground floor does the dream fade.

Norman Foster wanted to combine the concept of work and leisure

in the same space.

He did not want to make any distinction between the two,

so in his design he included a gym, a creche and a swimming pool.

Sadly, for one reason or another, all have been closed.

The one remaining amenity is on the top floor - the staff restaurant.

Here you can see the engineering that Norman Foster brings to his work,

and which he believes in revealing at every opportunity.

The space is used at all times by the workers,

not just for eating and drinking,

but for business conferences and discussions.

And one of the most important features of the restaurant

is access to the roof garden -

half an acre of topsoil seeded with grass and bounded by a privet.

What is wonderful about this building is that suddenly you emerge

from the workplace onto this roof,

and you are surrounded as if you are in the landscape,

you are in a meadow.

This idea of the juxtaposition of pleasure and leisure

with the workplace

makes this building very interesting for me.

And then the roof also connects to all the surrounding buildings

and the surrounding landscape.

All the green kind of connects to the green around it.

But the unfortunate thing, of course, as you look this way

you see this new addition

which is reminiscent of the Forbidden City,

and I wonder, what does that have to do with Englishness?

This is surely one of the most unattractive skylines

I have ever seen -

the village that grew too big for itself,

the tragic result of an unplanned urban landscape.

In such a landscape,

Norman Foster's building stands out as a bold statement of possibility.

But, for me, the most exciting feature is the way

it changes its character from day to night.

By day, it's a dark pool reflecting the outside world,

hiding what is within.

But as the daylight fades, the inside slowly becomes visible.

It is as if, when the workers have gone home,

the building comes alive and reveals a secret identity.

This was not my favourite building when it was built,

but I have come to like it more and more.

It is strange to think that it was completed 20 years ago

but is has a freshness and vigour that does not date.

It is not very typical of the work of Norman Foster,

but I think it is one of his best -

a timeless classic, a vision of what is possible.