West Wing, Guildhall

West Wing, Guildhall

Civic administrative building and library built between 1970 and 1975 for the City of London Corporation. It was designed by Richard Gilbert Scott of the firm Sir Giles Scott, Son and Partner. The main contractor was Trollope and Colls Limited and the consulting engineers were W S Atkins and Partners.

The building has a concrete structure, partly precast and partly cast in-situ, clad in precast concrete panels. External mullions are linked by beams to a central spine formed of in-situ concrete beams and columns. Floors are precast concrete panels and the roof is formed of concrete units over an in-situ box beam. Both structural and non-structural elements use white cement with a mix of aggregate, with surfaces ground and polished to give a smooth finish with exposed aggregates. Windows are held in slender bronzed anodised aluminium frames. A contemporary report at completion describes the internal use of polished English elm joinery, some of which survives.

Above ground, the building is L-shaped in plan. A long narrow range runs north to south, bordering the west side of Guildhall Yard. A polygonal Aldermen's Court protrudes from the east elevation and is raised over the yard on four columns. A second range to the north extends eastward towards the end of the North Wing. In the corner between the two ranges sits the single-storey, double-height, top-lit main reading room of the library. An ambulatory runs east and west in front of the reading room, linking the West Wing with the side of the Dance porch and giving access into the Great Hall.

The internal plan is relatively complex, with three basement levels extending under Guildhall Yard containing car parking, library stacks and book stores, plant rooms and back-of-house spaces. There are six storeys above ground floor level, with the top floor comprising a former flat, now a print room, and plant. The principal circulation core is at the centre of the north-south range, with the stair adjacent to the east elevation. A secondary stair is located further to the north, adjacent to the west elevation. A service stair stands at the north end.

An undercroft lies beneath the second floor of the three southernmost bays; one of these bays is now enclosed in glass to give added security to the building's entry at this end. The ground floor principally contains a reception area, refitted in the early 21st century, a former exhibition space and a series of three inter-connected reading rooms. The mezzanine level above contains the post room, a number of cellular offices and rooms relating to the library, with access to the Aldermen's Court also from this level via a short enclosed bridge to the octagonal chamber. The first and second floors contain open-plan office space and committee rooms, and the third floor provides office space, the members' restaurant, lounge, reading room and IT suite. The fourth floor has a main kitchen and Aldermen's dining room as well as overnight accommodation for members comprising a series of ensuite bedrooms, together with two small flats for senior members of staff.

The exterior is unmistakably modernist in character, its prevailing motif a shallow, triangular pointed arch, gesturing towards the Gothic architecture of the Great Hall to the east. The ground floor and undercroft are treated as an arcade, with wide pointed arches carried on piers which taper inwards from bottom to top. The first floor is jettied out from the ground floor and mezzanine, and the second and third floors from the first; the underside of projecting floor beams form extruded pointed arches. The fourth floor is set back from the third, with windows set beneath pointed arches in the soffit of the projecting and largely blind fifth floor above. The roof is formed of trough-like units, an inverted pointed arch in section, which cantilever out over the fifth floor.

The horizontality of the long east and west elevations is countered by concrete mullions which divide the narrowly-spaced window bays. The mullions on the second and third floors are continuous, with the distinction between floors expressed by recessed bronzed spandrel panels. The windows have top and bottom margin lights, with the glazing pattern nodding to that found in Giles Gilbert Scott's North Wing. The building's south elevation is partially blind, perhaps in deference to St Lawrence Jewry which is in close proximity. To the north is a ramped access to the basement car park, with a service stair at this end of the building enclosed in frosted glass blocks. The west elevation echoes the east, but a shallow ground floor extension has been added to more closely control the entrance from Aldermanbury.

Three separately expressed elements face into Guildhall Yard and break with the elevational formula of the main ranges. The Aldermen's Court is a sculptural, polygonal form, projecting into the yard and connected to the centre of the east elevation by a bridge from the mezzanine level. It is blind apart from groups of long slit windows in each corner. The walls taper inwards and the whole rests on four square columns which taper upwards to a form of geometric vaulting on the underside.

In the north-west corner of Guildhall Yard is the West Ambulatory, formed of a double row of inverted pyramidal concrete shells resting on slender concrete columns. This cloister-like feature connects the new building with the Great Hall. Each shell is separated from its neighbours by a strip of glass and the south side of the ambulatory is enclosed by glass.

Behind the ambulatory, tucked into the corner of the West Wing, is the double-height library reading room. Square in plan and blind, with walls having an inwards batter, it is distinctive for the grid of pyramidal fibreglass roof lights which illuminate the galleried reading room within.

The areas with the most interesting interior character and which are little-altered include the circulation cores, the library reading rooms, the West Ambulatory and the Aldermen's Court. In all but the latter, the finish of the smooth, aggregate-rich concrete is extensively on show. These areas include a number of original fittings such as bronze cylindrical wall lights and polygonal door handles cast with the Corporation crest in the Ambulatory. The trough-like cast terrazzo stairs feature glass and steel balustrades and chunky timber handrails in the circulation cores. The stairs are in an open well, running along the east and west sides of the building so are naturally lit by the extensively glazed elevations.

The library reading rooms are defined by structural arcades, with diffuse natural light entering the main reading room from above. The Aldermen's Court is a compact double-height room with inward leaning walls lined in grooved elm panelling. A suite of fixed chairs covered in blue leather are arranged around the edges of the room. A gallery over the entrance bridge has a steel balustrade and clock.

Much of the interior would always have been relatively simple, characterised principally by the polished finish of the concrete structure and the distinctive arched profile of the floor beams exposed in the ceilings which span east to west either side of the central spine beam and service run.