AUDI MAGAZNE
Subject: Wilkinson Eyre

Wilkinson Eyre Architects, the creative visionaries behind Audi’s ground-breaking new Audi Centre in west London, came to prominence thanks to transport. Not cars, though, but trains. Its work on various aspects of the Jubilee Line extension to the London Underground, especially Stratford station at its eastern extremity, hauled Wilkinson Eyre up to architecture’s top table where household names like Foster and Rogers were comfortably ensconced.

One building in particular, a huge depot where Jubilee Line trains are stabled and fettled overnight, is a stunning large-span structure. It’s tucked well away from public view, but Wilkinson Eyre made sure they included an ‘entrance pavilion’ that hints at the architectural gem beyond.

“You don’t realise what lies behind”, Chris Wilkinson says, with a wry smile. “I found you can make a mystery out of a shed. The way this practice has worked out is all the directors are the original people who were there at the start. We all worked on the Jubilee Line together and that’s where we developed our own ‘vocabulary’”.

For students and connoisseurs, the depot provides the reason for a pilgrimage, a truly secret destination. The Audi Centre, on the other hand, will be altogether more accessible; it occupies one of the UK’s most prominent roadside sites, on the A4 Great West Road between central London and Heathrow Airport. It will be the world’s largest Audi Centre, and probably the largest single car ‘emporium’ in Europe. Landmark status is pretty much inevitable.

“It’s the routeway into London although, of course, there are actually two roads”, he says. “One on top of the flyover which is very much the car-based arrival into London, and another below it for people travelling locally. I think it’s an inspired choice of location, although our winning model only had two storeys because we didn’t know about the raised road level at the time. Now it will have five floors, and two more underground”.

At 17,000sq m, the space inside will be absolutely vast. Upper levels, at which you can gawp from your passing taxi, will showcase the latest Audis; underground, workshops and pre-delivery areas will hum with activity. In between will be offices, meeting rooms, catered conference facilities, an internet café and shop, and museum and exhibition space. Plus, a branch of the Audi Forum that will welcome all Audi owners and aficionados. It will cost �30m to complete and opens in late 2008.

“Our winning design included three images: an Audi TT, a manta ray fish and a Stealth bomber”, explains Wilkinson, walking around the architect’s model of it displayed in his Clerkenwell offices. “What interests me is the way the curves work on these three. The manta ray, although it’s quite flat, is aerodynamic – aqua-dynamic, really – sinewy and alive, like the TT.

“The front façade is curved on a big radius, but it’s also angled out, which changes your perception of it. It has the effect of a panoramic screen while the roof gives the effect of double curvature, although, in fact, it isn’t because that would be hugely expensive”.

Indeed, the achievement of double curvature in architecture is something Wilkinson and his colleagues can thank the computer for. He cites it as the greatest technical leap forward in building design of recent times, and has made great play of it in the top section of the phenomenal new civic centre being built to Wilkinson Eyre’s plans at the historic King’s Waterfront site in Liverpool.

“The lower part is just vertical glass following a curve”, he says, “but the top side of the roof is translucent glazing that changes shape as it goes round to overhang the building by six metres. It’s like the upper section of a car, really – a warped plane. But the thing is, there’s a theoretical geometry to it that can only be measured in 3-D. It’s indeterminate, there’s no way of setting it out in the normal way. You have to have a computer to calculate the geometry”.

You can’t really burst on to the architectural scene. Despite Wilkinson Eyre’s standing today as innovators, its founders have served their time. Wilkinson himself set up his own practice aged 38 some 23 years ago (he was joined by partner Jim Eyre in 1999 – they’ve both been awarded OBEs for their work). Before that, and in succession, he worked for four of the greatest names in post-war British architecture: Denys Lasdun, Norman Foster, Michael Hopkins and Richard Rogers.

You can quickly make your mark, though, by specialising in a sector that’s been suffering neglect. Wilkinson found that in bridges. Few architects were terribly interested in them at the time when, in the late 1980s, the London Docklands Development Corporation sought designs for a bridge to conquer South Quay at Canary Wharf. But Wilkinson’s elegant design, spanning 140m, became a prominent early indication of the soaring ambitions of the rejuvenated Docklands. Ironically, within two years of completion, half of it was demolished to make way for more schemes. This serves to illustrate another of Wilkinson’s beliefs.

“We knew we’d lose half of it but I actually don’t see buildings as being permanent”, he declares. “We’re architects: which means we’re designing buildings, not creating monuments”. So does he regard the new London Audi Centre as something that can be changed at will? His answer is disarmingly straightforward: “It’s easy to get carried away but buildings are really very basic in terms of construction. If you change that, things can get very expensive indeed. There’s a lot of flexibility inside [the Audi Centre] to change the layout. It’s a showcase and not a showroom”.

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