Supreme and County Court

It is difficult when faced with a modernist building in red brick and tiles with hard angled chamfers not to point to Stirling and Gowan’s Engineering Building in Leicester. Clearly, this latter-day state sponsored work is not close to the prevailing quality of its influences, but the fact that a building finished in 1959 resonated repeatedly through British architectural cultures is noteworthy. The Property Services Agency was born from the Ministry of Works Architect’s Department and allied to the Environment Ministry from 1972 to ‘provide, manage, maintain, and furnish the property used by the government, including defence establishments, offices, courts, research laboratories, training centres and land’ [1]. Here, the project architect, S. Spielrein, was, according to Pevsner’s reading, deferent to the surrounding Victorian buildings and gave the scheme a deliberately low height. It is a busy building, its serrated profile, by virtue of incised apertures or rows of pronounced oriel windows, fittingly gesture to fortification. Its robust character is emphasised by both form and material which give it an overall sense of exclusion, despite an attempt to reconcile its civic status with the public realm.  

[1] Property Services Agency (1988) Annual report 1987-88, (London: HMSO)