Clifton Nurseries, Bayswater, London
1979-1980

This was the first of two urban design/architectural schemes built by Terry Farrell as part of an effort to revitalise temporarily vacant city sites. The client was Jacob Rothschild. His idea was that if NCP car parks could take over prominent derelict sites on short leases, he could do the same with a chain of nurseries that would provide both a retail outlet and environmental improvement for the community.

The project grew out of an earlier link with the Colonnades development – Farrell was originally commissioned to design a new library to complete the scheme but this proposal fell through. In this way, the nursery building is integrated into its urban design setting as a local landmark. The cross section is projected beyond the ends of the building onto huge yellow cut-outs that match the tiles of the Colonnades on hoardings that fence in the site. Integral to the brief from Clifton Nurseries was the belief that the building should be more than just the usual cheap shed and glass lean-to; it should be something more representative of the visual pleasure of plants and gardens and should be very much of the twentieth century, as representative of its day as the great Victorian greenhouses were of theirs.

An investigation of existing off-the-peg systems revealed the necessity of starting the design from scratch. The axially organised undulating form derived from the combination of the extruded plan and the use of large sheet materials recently made available for certain types of new technology agricultural greenhouses. Double-walled polycarbonate sheet for cladding was used for the first time in Britain, fixed to a demountable steel frame. It was considered appropriate as it combined high impact resistance, thermal insulation, excellent light transmission and was relatively cheap.

At Clifton Nurseries, the concept behind the building owes much to 'Buffer Thinking', Terry Farrell's competition-winning scheme for an energy-efficient community of the future, which made use of simple conservatories, banks of earth and belts of trees to control the sun and wind. Environmental control was achieved by a combination of devices. Winter heat losses are controlled by insulation of the polycarbonate whilst summer heat gain is controlled by blinds on the south elevation and by a self-ventilating and heat-regulating system based on the principle of a solar chimney.