Stockwell Garage
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Stockwell Garage is a large bus garage in Stockwell, London. It was designed by Adie, Button and Partners, with the engineer A E Beer, and was opened in 1952.
It is typical of much of the concrete architecture built in the post war reconstruction period in London around the Festival of Britain. There was a steel shortage, so concrete was used to support the roof. However, the opportunity was taken to create a bravura piece of reinforced concrete design. The 393 ft long roof structure is supported by ten very shallow "two-hinged" arched ribs. Each rib is 7 ft deep at the centre of the arches, 10 ft 6 in at the end, and spans 194 ft. Cantilevered barrel vaults between, topped by large skylights, span the 42 ft between each pair of ribs. The vaults are crossed by smaller ribs to prevent torsion. Seen from the outside, the main arches are visible as outward-leaning buttresses, with a segmental curve to each bay forming a flowing roof line.
The garage provides 73,350 sq ft of unobstructed parking space and could originally house 200 buses. At the time of construction it was the largest unsupported area under one roof in Europe.
Since 1988 the garage has been a Grade II* listed building reflecting its importance in post-war architectural and engineering history.
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