User:Nigel PG Dale/sandbox/Patera Building

In the London Docklands, at Albert Island in the Newham district of East London, stands the Patera Building prototype that was manufactured in Stoke-on-Trent in 1982 by Patera Products Ltd. In 1980, Consultant architects and engineers wee instructed by LIH (Properties) Ltd to design a relocatable building 216 square metres in size.

Longton Industrial Holdings Plc (LIH), an industrial group based in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, commissioned designs for an “off the peg” relocatable industrial building made from steel. They wanted to expand their interests in steel fabrication and they intended to sell the buildings as a product. The factory where the Patera buildings were made and where the first two were erected was in Victoria Road, Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

In 1982, the first prototype Patera Building was manufactured by Patera Products Ltd and erected outside their workshops. The idea of the Patera project was to supply a factory finished industrial workshop. The buildings were standardised, 18m long by 12m wide, with an internal height of 3.85m throughout. They were fully finished in the factory ready for bolting together at the desired location. Three men with a forklift truck could erect one in a matter of days. It was seen in the context of vehicle or boatbuilding technologies in terms of its light weight construction. Each building needed a reinforced concrete raft slab as a base to which the structure was fixed using specially designed steel castings. All the buildings' services — power, telephone cabling, water, etc. — were distributed within the depth of the building envelope.

The structural frames were pin-jointed for ease of handling and assembly. At the centres of the spans of the frames were 'tension-only' links — special fittings able to respond to varying structural loads. Under normal conditions the structure acted as a three-pin arch. In other conditions, such as wind up-lift, it acted as a rigid frame. This innovation meant that very slender lightweight steel tubes could be used for the portal frame trusses.

Cladding consisted of structural steel panels. The same panels were used for both the walls and the roof. A new pressing method was developed for their manufacture that kept their edges flat and corrugated them in the centre, which increased their strength. All the panels were mounted on the inside of the frames and this brought certain advantages. By keeping the structure outside the building, it was protected from fire should one break out inside, thus meeting fire regulations without the need to encase the structure with bulky fire resistant materials.

The first two buildings were erected at the site adjacent to the factory and stayed in place for some two years. They were used as demonstration buildings, part of the marketing of the project. Sites where other buildings were erected include Barrow-in-Furness, Canary Wharf and the Royal Docks in London. LIH Plc were proud to have hosted a Royal visit by HRH Richard, Duke of Gloucester, an architect himself, during which he was shown around the workshops and the buildings.

1984-85: After the manufacturing company Patera Products Ltd was closed down, the two stock buildings, that is the prototype and another similarly sized building, were each extended from five bays to six and moved to London's Canary Wharf to be used as exhibition space for London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC). They were positioned next door to the now demolished Limehouse TV Studios where the original Spitting Image puppets and programmes were made. Also near neighbours were the giant dishes of a satellite receiving station established for improved business communication, and the site was on the late 1980s route of the London Marathon between, the fifteenth and sixteenth mile marks.

In 1989, to make way for the much heralded high rise commercial developed planned for Canary Wharf to include the then tallest office block in Europe - renamed 1, Canada Square, and as a result of deregulation of The City by the Margaret Thatcher government - the Big Bang, Limehouse Studios was compulsorily purchased and demolished, and one of the two Patera Buildings (the original prototype) was moved to its third location on Albert Island. There it stayed used as a workshop on a boat repair yard and marina - just the type of use for which it was intended - as the equivalent of a High Tech Nissen Hut.