Chris Garner - 35 years with F+M

I commenced work with F+M on 1 January 1968, at 71A The Close, and was put under the 'wing' of Simon Crosse’s, who had himself only started at F+M 3 months previously.

There were around 90 people in the Practice at that stage, hence the need to have an office into which we could all fit!  Ferry Road was under construction and we moved in in September 1968.  During my first session at F+M, I worked my way up Palace Street, Norwich starting at the Maids Head Hotel, moving on to the new Ford dealership entrance and showroom, to Palace Plain and the WRVS housing at Queen Elizabeth Close, which won an RIBA Housing Award.  Projects at the fledgling UEA also followed, with the Chaplaincy and the Square, which is only now being resurfaced and landscaped, after nearly 40 years and the feet of thousands of students!

I took a ‘sabbatical’ in 1972, moving to Furze & Hayden, a more commercial firm and worked on a Cultural Centre in Doha, a new Mall in Norwich and a one-off farmhouse outside Long Stratton, until a recession, oil shortages and a 3-day week brought commercial activity to a standstill, and with it my job!

I was fortunate to be taken on at Norfolk County Council, in the Architect’s Department, which dealt mainly with educational buildings and, for a few years, aspired to higher standards of design.  During my spell there, I designed and built a science department, a middle school and a new high school, before becoming too constrained by costs and lack of opportunities.  I took an Open University Arts Course, due to lack of intellectual challenge at County Hall, but was contacted by Simon Crosse who persuaded me to return to F+M, as housing was a growing element to the workload and the recession was ending.

From 1978 I became immersed in housing, both public and private sector, with large scale social housing schemes for Cotman Housing and sheltered housing for South Norfolk Council, as well as the beginning of a long relationship with Bradford Property Trust at Martlesham Village; the forerunner of many of the new village schemes to come.

In the late 1980s, I first met Ian Chater, a developer at Bixley Farm outside Ipswich, with whom I have worked to the present day, assisted by Adrian Waters.  I also won a competition in Milton Keynes at Emerson Valley, which was commemorated in an article by Sutherland Lyall called ‘Beam Me Up Dunroamin’.

At that time I was also involved in a project to convert a disused grain warehouse on Ipswich Wet Dock into a headquarters building for Contship UK Ltd, a container shipping company whose MD was a very stylish lady, Miss Battistello, who had very strong views on how the building should be converted.  Luckily for me, we managed to achieve most of what she wanted, apart from the lighting.  We had agreed that it should be lit by uplighters throughout, and the lighting scheme was designed on that basis.  However, two months from completion Miss B asked me where the light fittings were, pointing to the ceiling!  We managed to incorporate Artemeide ceiling fittings just in time for the opening.

One major feature of that building and a precursor of our sustainable design policies was the heating system.  This was an air-water heat exchanger which fed a series of reverse-cycle heat pumps which could provide cooling or heating in different parts of the building.  As the building was on a north/south axis, with a fully glazed south frontage, the north end was always cooler than the south.  The system is still functioning well and the building acted as a catalyst for the development of the Wet Dock.

From the 1980s to the present day, I have experienced the fluctuations in the housing market, which sometimes favour the Public sector and sometimes the Private. Woodbridge has seen significant activity from F+M in the developments at Carmelite Court, Cumberland Mews, 3 residential conversion schemes, a development for Countryside Properties and a further development for Chater Homes at Melton Grange.

We also won the bid for the St Audrys Hospital site for Hopkin Homes, which was the major development that propelled them into the major league and we carried out subsequent competition-winning schemes at Bury St Edmunds, as well as for Wimpey Homes.  In masterplanning, we assisted Crest Nicholson with their scheme for 5,000 houses near Stanstead, at Easton Lodge, and achieved an outline approval for them at Red Lodge, now called Kings Warren.  A later masterplan proposal was that for Bar Hill, near Cambridge, which was very attractive but rested on the upgrading of the A14 at some future date.

In the latter years I have been more involved in Norwich schemes; at Ber Street, Rose Lane, the Labour Club and ABC Wharf.  We had an interesting project in Peterborough for Norwich Union in their Queensgate Centre, where I was assisted by Vladan, in renovating a Victorian Arcade and designing an extension to a listed Almshouse for conversion into a Yates Wine Lodge.

There has always been an awareness in the Practice of the need to design ‘sustainably’ and my projects from the 1980s onwards demonstrate this fact.  We also won a competition, with W F Pointer as contractor and developer, to redevelop an area in Norwich adjacent to the Inner Ring Road called Calvergate.

This was a challenging project in that it incorporated the conversion of a redundant brush factory, a unique Weavers Cottage, a pair of 18th century townhouses and a former public house, which had become the Little Portion Mission and a Women’s Refuge.   The new build requirements were 60,000 sq ft of office accommodation and a new sheltered housing scheme for Norwich City Council, which was the ‘price’ for the site, as the Local Authority at that time had any land receipts ‘frozen’.

The office accommodation was on either side of Calvert Street, with a bridge link between the two buildings.  The client was adamant that there should be no refrigeration or CFCs produced on the site, so a heating/cooling strategy emerged utilising two separate banks of heat exchangers, one to serve each block, which both connected to Eutectic Salt tanks before distribution to reverse cycle heat pumps throughout the offices.

This system enabled excess heat generation during the day to be stored in the Eutectic Salts which convert from solid to liquid in absorbing heat and releasing heat and used to pre-heat for the morning cycle. This project was designed in 1987 and Contship in 1985, so we were pioneering these technologies over 20 years ago.

Which brings me back to the current time, when these issues of sustainability are a major design consideration.  Some current projects which are of interest:

 

Newark, Parnham’s Mill – 63 apartments over a mill race with 3no hydro-power Archimedes screw turbines in existing races, with photovoltaic panels used as privacy screen 6-storey.

 

Diss – use of The Mere as a heat source for heat pump sealed system for 14 apartments.

 

Incidentally, the heat pump was invented and developed in 1950 in Norwich at Eastern Electricity HQ which we are redeveloping for Targetfollow with the use of CHP and heat exchangers.

 

Sustainability Panel and ISO 14001 - Under Elsie’s leadership we are heading toward accreditation under ISO 14001 this year, and our sustainable design philosophy will be embedded in a new sustainable Design Guide developed by Gavin.