Wallace Building

Large-scale educational building, purpose designed for Natural Sciences teaching (geography, geology, botany, and zoology), in the classical-modernist style characteristic of the work of the Percy Thomas partnership at this time, and intentionally sympathetic to the character of the earlier library on the opposite side of the campus. Buff Tondu brick with ashlar dressings; flat roof. Mainly 2 storeys (though with basement at SW), planned as a long NE-SW range with shorter NW-SE wings. These wings form advanced outer blocks to the long main range, which is further articulated by the advancing entrance block at centre. This has strongly projecting concrete frame containing and emphasising a continuous grid of concrete, which comprises the glazing of ground and first floor, divided by a band of panels containing cast emblems symbolising the subjects taught within. Only the wide doorway with its flanking glazing interrupts this grid. A similar grid-like effect in concrete is achieved in the long ranges to either side of the entrance: again, continuous strips of window at ground and first floor are divided only by slender vertical and horizontal bands (the metal glazing bars recently renewed), and separated by panels with moulded emblems, as before. The schema for the outer wings is slightly different: Here, the fenestration still occupies framed panels of stone/concrete, but the windows are taller, and the vertical divisions between them are emphasised over the horizontal: the panels between storeys are blank. Simple framed square windows to basement storey at SW.

Grand entrance hall, with staircase to rear, top lit by circular windows and curved glazed ceiling. Teaching rooms, labs, etc., open off long spinal corridors.