The Renault Building

Swindon, Wiltshire
Foster Associates with Arup Engineers, 1980-1982 (Opened 1983)

Primarily constructed of forty-two identical 24x24 meters square bays, the Renault Building’s radical and innovative design by Norman Foster housed a warehouse, distribution centre, offices, a showroom for cars and trucks, a training school and a restaurant. It has been said that the distinctive yellow roof was so identifiable that the company did not have to have their distinct logo on the building, the roof was enough!

Based on a twenty-four metre square grid, the structure allows racking systems to be laid out in both directions without leaving any exposed columns, a design that allowed for the possibility of future expansion. The warehouse has an expansion capacity of up to 5574 square metres. At present, the building is 288metres x 96metres with a height of 10 metres at the high point and 7.5 metres at the low. The diameter of the columns is 450 millimetres. The building incorporates parking for 180 cars.

The overall total net building cost was £8,266,400 (in 1983) or £349 per square metre; the shell cost £210 per square metre, the services £85 per square metre and the fittings £53 per square metre.

The warehouse is serviced by sixteen loading bays, of which two have ramps providing level access with the remaining fourteen; all bays have fully automatic dock levellers with dock aprons. The auxiliary office, staff and showroom accommodation is contained within the envelope of the building and is built with an eight person passenger lift, suspended ceiling with recessed lighting, raised floors, gas fired central heating and air-conditioning in part.

The design won a number of awards, including the Structural Steel Award (1984), The Civil Trust Award (1984), the Financial Times ‘Architecture at Work’ Award (1984) and the Constructa Prize for Industrial Architecture in Europe (1986).

On the 6th April 2004, Swindon Borough Council awarded Planning Permission for the Chinese Government to set up a trading post at the Renault Building. Reportedly purchased for £17 million by Jubilee International (a Chinese Consortium), the expectation is that the first Chinese businesses will begin to move in later this year, with the Centre becoming fully operational by 2005.

In 1984, scenes from Roger Moore’s seventh and final Bond film “View to a Kill” were set within the distribution warehouse of the building.

Nigel Fowler Sutton

Current status
January 2006
No decision has been made on the spot listing application made in July 2003 by the Twentieth Century Society. Its current owners are not using the building and while it sits empty and unprotected it is still considered to be under threat.

Further reading
Colin Davies: High Tech Architecture, New York 1988
Building Design, 3 September 1982, p 8
Building Design, 26 November 1982, pp 20-1
Architects’ Journal, December 1982, pp 40-1
The Architectural Review, July 1983, p. 20-32

Contacts
Swindon Planning, T 01793 463000

Image credits
Photographs Nigel Fowler Sutton