Block A, Block B, Block C, Block D, Block E, Block F, Block L At Oaklands College City Campus

BLOCK A, BLOCK B, BLOCK C, BLOCK D, BLOCK E, BLOCK F, BLOCK L AT OAKLANDS COLLEGE CITY CAMPUS

College of Further Education, now part of Oaklands College, built 1958-60 by Hertfordshire County Council Architect's Department, with John Wakely as job architect. The canteen range was extended in 1965-6.

The buildings employ Hills' 2 foot 8 inch light rolled steel frame, with a subsidiary aluminium cladding system set off the grid and infilled with glass and grey spandrel panels. Most bays are 5 feet 6 inches wide (two units) but there are contrasting bays of 2 feet 8 inches. Western red cedar boarding, now stained black, and blind walls of purple brick provide a contrasting vertical emphasis to the horizontality of the glazed areas. Flat roofs are supported on light welded lattice roof beams. Most windows have narrow full-width rectangular lights at the top of the frames, some with opening lights. Some areas have full-height glazing, others have infill spandrels below dado height. Double doors are of timber, with glazing panels.

The former St Alban's College of Further Education comprises a series of five college buildings, mostly linked by covered ways at ground level, while Blocks B, D and E are linked by a glazed first-floor bridge. Each building contributes to a coherent whole along with the raised beds and steps between them. Interiors were always simple and designed to be flexible, as the needs of the college were subject to continual change; the stairwells have been upgraded not inappropriately to meet fire regulations.

Block A is a rectangular block of two storeys and sixteen bays, built for teaching arts and crafts. Interiors are simple, with flexible studio spaces set around a staircase with steel balustrades, timber handrail and open treads. Narrow bays of one 2 foot 8 inch unit break up the repetitive pattern of the grid.

Block B is a square building of ten bays and four storeys, each originally with a classroom in each corner and a central area with stairwells and broad landing on each floor; the upper floor has been adapted as a computer area. Staircases have steel balustrades, timber handrail and open treads. A link, glazed at first floor level and open below, connects to Blocks D and E.

Block C is the L-shaped canteen, one high storey with full-height glazing to the central courtyard under grey fascia and central opening lights. Big timber double doors punctuate this continual glazed elevation, which is the boldest expression of the lightness of the system. The six-bay return is treated similarly over dado cladding. Extensions to the rear are in keeping but not of special inherent interest.

Block D is largely double height, with a two-storey range to the front that connects the glazed link to the former caretaker's flat, now offices, at the western end of the building. Block D has full-height glazing to large areas, with purple brick walling to the sides. The entrance to the left, and stairs from the link, give onto a small shop area lined in timber, denoted externally by timber fascia. Pairs of thick timber double doors with glazing panels on the north elevation, and cedar boarding at the junction with the link, provide contrast of light and dark. The large double-height hall with stage also has boarded cedar linings, here vertical. A double landing and stairs lead to the caretaker's flat, with two separate routes in the one stairwell.

Block E is an eighteen-bay rectangle of two storeys containing administrative offices, with stairwells at the ends denoted by changes in the glazing. Full-height glazing under roof-level fascia to the upper storey, dado panels to the ground floor. Single unit 2 foot 8 inch bays break up the repetitive Miesian pattern of the grid. The interior has staircases with steel balustrades, timber handrails and open tread stairs.

Block F to the rear is the science block, with ground-floor classrooms and on the first floor, four laboratories for biology, chemistry and other sciences set around a central preparation area and reached from two staircases. The plan is very economical of circulation space. Elevations reflect this greater dignity, with two blind panels of cedar boarding on the main elevation contrasted with alternating narrow and broad bays of glazing. Regular 5 foot 6 inch panels to the sides. The staircases have steel balustrades, timber handrails and open treads, while the labs have science benches and built-in cupboards and shelving.

Block L is the gymnasium, formerly shared by the College of Further Education and the Hertfordshire College of Building and closing off the vista at the end of Block E. The same 2 foot 8 inch grid is used, but part infilled with light yellow brick below clerestories on the two long sides. Glazing to the end bays of these elevations. Blind end walls. The interior has an open truss roof to the high single-storey main space, which also has an end climbing wall.

A glazed sixteen-bay link with full-height glazing and tiled floor, with double doors at each end, joins Blocks B and D, with a spur to the entrance on the side of Block E, all at first-floor level. An attached low wall of purple brick and steps to the front of Block E support raised paved and pebbled areas, set between paviours that follow the grid of the building; kidney-shaped beds originally designed to protect existing fruit trees in front of the canteen are lined with pebbles. A retaining wall of purple brick encloses the raised garden area to the east of Blocks E and F.

The complex was awarded the RIBA Bronze Medal in 1960.

The population of Hertfordshire more than doubled between the 1930s and 1960s, as young couples left London to seek work and better living conditions in the new and expanding towns. Their children had to be provided firstly with primary education, which prompted the rush of prefabricated schools carefully designed to small children's needs in the late 1940s and which established Hertfordshire County Council Architect's Department as the most progressive practice, private or public, in the country. This spirit lived on in the 1950s, when the demand was for secondary schools, and noticeably revived at the end of the decade when the so-called bulge generation required colleges for apprenticeship and vocational courses, and for O and A level teaching. St Alban's College of Further Education was built primarily for fifteen to eighteen year olds, but was always intended for adults of all ages, particularly with its part-time, evening and leisure courses. The college was also intended as a feeder to local technical colleges, in the provision of which Hertfordshire was notably progressive. It was designed to bring a number of facilities previously scattered around the county onto a single site, and specifically replaced two very large Victorian villas which served as temporary teaching accommodation. Completion of the new buildings was phased over 1959-60, and the villas were then demolished.

St Alban's College of Further Education, together with the former Hertfordshire College of Building alongside, was the first building constructed on a 2 foot 8 inch modular planning grid developed by Hertfordshire County Council Architect's Department under Jack Platt. Its development marked the culmination of over a decade devoted to the development of a system that was flexible, elegant and economical, and whose components could be adapted to single or multi-storey use on a wide range of sites. St Alban's was followed by three more colleges built to the same system, but none are so well composed or carefully detailed. Extra care was taken on the prototype, with a slightly larger budget, or, as Andrew Saint has written, "as these colleges were quite complex and costly buildings, the range of these new system could be tested without the rigid cost restraints which would have operated in schools. After them, the system could be refined and brought down in cost for regular application in school building." The difficulties of the steep, heavily landscaped site were turned to advantage so carefully was the design thought through. The different levels of the building reflect not only the steep slope but the desire to retain mature trees, which were retained in raised beds when part of the surrounding land was cut away. There was also the difficulty of having to build around existing buildings which were in use by the college until the new ones were completed, when they were demolished.

For Ian Nairn, this is "an excellent building and a very good proof that a big department can keep up its vitality for a long time. To produce something like this, the mechanical side of architecture must have been organised over the years into something which is almost foolproof. The college is a professional building through and through, with no botched details and no out of the way corners where the inspiration gave out. This is the ripe eloquent fruit of fifteen years of hard work in a local authority office; it is a purely British achievement and on that can stand comparison with the very best that has been done abroad."