The Storage.co.uk Award for Storage Facility Design

And the winners are:

♦ Greenbox Storage

♦ Anchor Self Storage, Swindon

♦ Access Self Storage Acre Lane, London

♦ Storage King, Liverpool

♦ Waterpark Storage

Public image

The public is getting used to driving past large storage facilities on the edge of British cities. Let’s face it, few of these are distinguished by architectural appeal, let alone innovation. Given that many are new-build facilities, this is surely an opportunity lost – an opportunity to enhance the built environment, and the public image of the self storage industry.

Of course there are cogent reasons militating against applying inspired architectural design to self storage facilities. Innovative buildings are generally more expensive to build, and self storage is a competitive service industry that has to pare down costs to avoid having to pass these on to the customer.

Also, self storage is an industry that appeals to customers through such qualities as security, ease of access, functionality and dependability. Many might argue that the architecture simply has to be good enough to match these demands.

But good, interesting and visually satisfying architecture also appeals to the public on a different level, transmitting positive signals that can benefit individual companies, as well as the industry as a whole. A lot of people, customers or otherwise, are likely to think more positively about Shurgard, for example, because they take pleasure in the lighthouses that distinguish their self storage facilities – and so clearly reinforce the brand.

The designer’s touch

Making a new-build facility more appealing to the eye does not necessarily require lavish leaps of imagination and engineering: you don’t need to call in Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid (although how wonderful it would be to see how they might address the design needs of the self storage industry!)

This is why Greenbox Storage was selected a one of our winners. Their facility at Swanley, in Kent, has an admirable elegance: the façade has satisfying lines and proportions, enhanced by contrasting brickwork, and offset by green shrubs that echo the company name; the use of glass suggests light and openness, in contrast to the bunker-like appearance of many purpose-built warehouse storage facilities. The interior is clean, efficient and spacious.

At the Swindon branch of Anchor Self Storage the façades have been made interesting by the combination of the intriguing massing of forms and angular shapes, rounded projections, the use of surface corrugation, and the bold but satisfying combination of colours: red, yellow and fawn.

A new generation?

For a casual passerby, Access Self Storage’s new branch in Acre Lane (pictured above), in Brixton, South London, may not look like a self storage facility at all. With its plate-glass frontage it looks more like an office block – and an elegant one at that. The strong horizontals of the glass and metalwork are cleverly balanced by the bright blue of the vertical planes that carry the Access logo. These also bookend the glass, but one end the glass projects beyond the blue into a see-through corner that gives the façade a refreshing asymmetry and a sense of lift.

Well, of course, this is an office block. This is one of a number of storage facilities that also have offices, where clients can both run a business and store their wares and stock – a happy symbiosis (see our blog entitled “Self Storage Offices”).

Respecting tradition

Many self storage facilities, of course, are not new-build. Instead, they make the best of old warehouses, factories, or – in the case of the Access branch in West Norwood, in South London – old tram sheds. Some conversions simply make do with what’s there, but others can revitalise an old building, and draw attention afresh to its unique architectural merits.

This is the case of Storage King Liverpool, which occupies a former Harland & Wolff marine workshop and foundry in Bootle – a magnificent Victorian red-brick building with Neoclassical proportions, plus chimney stacks, sited close to the Alexandra Docks.

A complete contrast is presented by Waterpark Storage, in Latton, in Wiltshire, between Swindon and Cirencester. In keeping with its rural, Cotswolds surroundings, this storage facility looks more like farm buildings and a stable block – and handsome ones at that.

Outside in

There is perhaps a tendency for storage facility to designers to think from the inside out: to create a framework for the units, then wrap it in a box.

The winners of the Storage.co.uk Award for Storage Facility Design show that architects can do rather more than this: by thinking more about the exterior, they can bring verve and human interest to the building as a whole, helping to create a positive response in customers and the public at large – who are, given the nature of the business, all potential customers.