Isle of Dogs Pumping Station, including transformer house, paving, bollards and surrounding wall to the west and south

Storm water pumping station built 1986-1988 by John Outram Associates for the London Docklands Development Corporation and Thames Water.

Construction and Materials

The building has a structural steel frame above massive concrete foundations. The steel columns are encased in concrete for fire protection and clad in brickwork connected by steel ties. The external walls are formed of bands of contrasting Staffordshire blue engineering bricks, Butterley Rochford red facing bricks and Redland Otterham stock bricks, with cast concrete dressings. The roof is covered with green glazed Roman tiles and faced internally with diagonal tongue-and-groove boarding nailed to timber joists.

Layout

The building has a rectangular footprint, orientated east-west, and a shallow pitched roof with deeply overhanging eaves. It stands within an enclosed yard which is divided into two sections, east and west. The eastern part of the yard (by the river) is raised so the building appears lower on the exterior. The main entrance is from Stewart Street to the west, and in the south-west corner of the site is the transformer station.

The building's interior resembles an aisled hall, with the central full-height pump hall running the length of the building. The south aisle is occupied by the surge tank; brickwork columns rise from the top of the tank to form an arcade. The north aisle is largely enclosed by brickwork and contains a double-height screen room (to remove large debris from the water) and an electrical control room with staff rooms above. Engaged piers rise from the ground, becoming an open arcade above the staff rooms.

Exterior

The building's character is that of an ancient trabeated temple: the pitched roof forms a shallow broken pediment at either end, supported by a pair of giant red brick semi-circular columns (which conceal ventilation ducts) flanking a central entrance. The columns have precast concrete fins, two metres high, which form huge stylised Corinthian capitals, their colours ranging from black to yellow, red, green and blue. At both ends of the building a large circular fan (to avoid a build-up of methane in the building) breaks through the base of the pediment. The pediment and fan are framed by curved-profile black galvanised steel fascias, which contrast with the white of the pediment's corrugated tympanum and the sails of the fan.

Between the giant central columns the wall face has blue, yellow and red brick banding. On the Stewart Street elevation the central entrance door is slightly recessed, set within a splayed opening and surrounded by a wide, flat, white concrete architrave, interrupted by bands of red brickwork. The opposing door, facing towards the river, has a simpler variation of this arrangement, the door appearing to have risen up above a sinking architrave. Outside the columns the lower two-thirds of the yellow and red striped wall face are battered below a heavy white concrete dado, which returns down the sides of the building. The sides are broken into six bays by battered piers and, above dado height, by white clustered columns which appear as if to support stylised red and white joist ends beneath the roof. In each bay is a large, green, circular louvered vent with a red brick surround. Each of the long sides has a single set of loading bay doors, recently renewed in 2017, and on the north side are two personnel doors, one at the lower courtyard level giving access to the electrical control room, and one at the higher courtyard level giving access, up a short external flight of steel steps, to the staff rooms.

Interior

The interior is lined in engineering and stock brick with terrazzo flooring. The semi-circular moulding of the external dado is echoed in interior detailing; namely the capitals of the brickwork piers, the cornice around the top of the surge tank and the enclosed north aisle, and the chunky architraves of the windows in the north aisle overlooking the pump hall. The west door (the main entrance from Stewart Street) is enclosed by an internal curved brick lobby, and at the far end the door on the river front is at first-floor height, reached via steel stairs and a gallery. The roof structure is exposed, its steel members painted bright yellow, as are the rails for a travelling crane and their supporting brackets, fixed into the aisle piers.

The electrical control room and staff rooms are accessible only from outside the building, but they are linked with one another internally by a stair with terrazzo treads and a steel balustrade with slender black stick balusters, cylindrical blue newels and a rounded wooden handrail. Internal doors are flush veneered timber, stained peacock-blue. The internal architraves of the windows overlooking the pump hall have a flat concrete field, surrounded by the chunky semi-circular moulding found elsewhere, this time in black-stained timber. The floors of the circulation space are terrazzo, with red clay tiles in the rooms.

Transformer Station

The transformer station is of grey engineering brick, three bays wide, with a hipped roof tiled in green glazed tiles to match the main building. The bays are defined by semi-circular columns with black tiled capitals, which appear as if to support stylised red and white joist ends beneath the roof. The central door is surrounded by a heavy round-headed brick archway which defines the main frontage. There are lower doors and cast concrete light fittings to either side, and metal caging to the side elevation. The rear is formed by the security wall.

Security Wall, Gates and Paving

The external concrete security wall is battered and faced in dark engineering brick with full-height vertical slits, giving glimpses into the site. At the main entrance gateway (on the west side) are two massive cylindrical piers, the interior of each creating a small storeroom accessed from within the yard. The top of the piers are lined with asphalt and serve as planters. The steel gates have a large eye motif at the top, the iris being a circular opening aligned with the building's giant propeller. The wall continues round to the south side of the building, where there is a second gated service entry and the wall is partly topped with curved steel spikes.

The courtyard is paved in interlocking paviors which form a ripple-like pattern. On the river side of the building there are red and yellow brick circles in the paving, aligned with the outer walls and aisles. These are symbolic of lost or submerged columns. Within the courtyard there are walls which separate the two levels (east and west). To the north-west, adjacent to the screen room, is a ramped pit with an overhead gantry crane, allowing containers of screened material to be loaded onto vehicles. The pit is surrounded by a black tubular steel railing. There are five concrete bollards on the site (including two outside the main gate); these have a semi-circular profile on one side, and a square profile on the other, with a part flat, part curved head.

All plant, the full-height railings to the south and east of the building, and the north boundary wall of the site are not included in the listing.