Hounslow
Much of Hounslow’s modernist architecture is influenced by its rich industrial heritage. As part of Middlesex, what became Hounslow was quite rural in character, with much land bound up as part of the estates of country houses like Chiswick House, Osterley Park and Syon Park. Brentford was the centre of trade in the area and when the Great West Road was built through the town, a section of it became known as the “Golden Mile” due to its dazzling Art Deco factories, chiefly by Wallis, Gilbert & Partners. Sadly this area was not treated as the national treasure it should have been, and there has been much tarnishing of Golden Mile, most notoriously in the sneaky demolition of the Firestone Factory on August Bank Holiday weekend in 1980, before the building could be listed. Now all that remains of the factory are its gate posts.
Elsewhere in the borough there are a range of interesting and lesser known modernist buildings. Aerodromes, stadiums, banks and health centres all feature a variety of interwar styles, from Art Deco to streamline modern to International Style modernism. Post-war styles are represented as well; brutalism at the Penguin Warehouse at Harmondsworth, Neo-vernacular by Edward Jones in Lovat Walk and High Tech at Nicholas Grimshaw’s (now demolished) Homebase on the Great West Road. Hounslow's own architecture department largely used the widespread system-built concrete method to provide their construction needs. However they did produce a few buildings of note; the brutalist Heathlands School with extra thick concrete to protect it from aircraft noise and the Civic Centre with its landscape design by designer Preben Jacobsen, the last now unfortunately demolished.
Elsewhere in the borough there are a range of interesting and lesser known modernist buildings. Aerodromes, stadiums, banks and health centres all feature a variety of interwar styles, from Art Deco to streamline modern to International Style modernism. Post-war styles are represented as well; brutalism at the Penguin Warehouse at Harmondsworth, Neo-vernacular by Edward Jones in Lovat Walk and High Tech at Nicholas Grimshaw’s (now demolished) Homebase on the Great West Road. Hounslow's own architecture department largely used the widespread system-built concrete method to provide their construction needs. However they did produce a few buildings of note; the brutalist Heathlands School with extra thick concrete to protect it from aircraft noise and the Civic Centre with its landscape design by designer Preben Jacobsen, the last now unfortunately demolished.