Thames Valley University

Thames Valley University (TVU) is one of a number of new British universities developed from former further education institutions in the 1990s. The existing campus at Slough, developed from the 1950s on, was undistinguished, with poor public spaces and indistinct circulation routes, and isolated from the town centre by a main highway and railway line.

The practice was asked to carry out a masterplan for the future development of the campus and to identify a site for the proposed learning resource centre, essentially a library but with provision for the use of computers, videos and other new information technology as well as books. The university wanted a clearly accessible building which could be built to a tight budget and a fast construction programme.

The completed building is both straightforward (in terms of its simple diagram, balancing a "warehouse" storage area with an open reading and reception space) and highly memorable. The linear, three-storey bookstack block is contained within a fair-faced in situ concrete frame. The reception and reading area is covered by a curved steel roof structure, fully glazed at each end and with a 40m long window opening extending the length of the reading room and providing views of a new external pond. Solar control is provided by internal motorised fabric blinds. Ventilation is primarily non-mechanical. The tough finishes and strong colours of this striking building, which cost just £3.6 million including new landscaping, recalls Rogers' work of the Sixties and early Seventies, not least in its references to the metallic aesthetic of the Case Study houses programme.