ABSTRACT
Sankey Warehouse, Epsom, England Introduction Only rarely does a utility building receive as much attention at design stage as this. This is a simple rectangular building, crisply detailed and cheaply built, with 2000 sq m of storage space at ground floor level and a further 210 sq m of office space at a mezzanine level. The building throws up general points concerning the factors which affect building costs, and the judgement involved in selecting elements which can be combined into a piece of architecture. Here the internal office walls and the external walls, particularly the well proportioned glass gable wall, constititute the permanent architectural elements; most of the spaces are not consciously ordered and detailed and thus left to develop their own character. This kind of decision, necessary in all design work, can be badly judged or ignored with consequences which may range from awkward-looking lumps or elements in disarray, at one extreme, to fussy detail or irritating irrelevancies at the other. The building structure consists mainly of a series of pitched portal frames but, by an apposite use of hipped ends and a parapet all the way round, the roof is totally separated from the walls to the benefit of the building as a whole.
