ALISON Monteith, managing director of Monteith Scott interior designers based in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, has a very personal story behind her choice of favourite building.
AS a child, my family lived in Barnt Green. Every now and then, we would jump in the car and my father would drive us over to Shirley Aquatics on the Stratford Road.
On the way, we would pass a building occupied by Lucas’ research laboratories in Birmingham’s 1960s automotive heyday. It is now home to TRW Automotive.
Like most children, at the time I didn’t really appreciate the finer points of architecture and didn’t pay much attention to the building that was barely visible from the road. I suppose I was more interested in the new fish we were going to buy.
However, over the years architecture and interiors have become my profession and my passion. Now, when I drive past the TRW Automotive building, the memories come flooding back.
My father, James Monteith, was the architect that designed the building. After moving down to Birmingham, from Stirling in Scotland, he worked for a company called Clifford, Tee and Gale and carried out a lot of projects for Lucas.
He was a very talented architect but he got promoted and stopped doing what he loved, which was designing buildings. He was well known in the profession and went on to teach at Aston University.
Just a few years ago, I bumped into someone who worked in the building and I said my father would like to go in and see inside. They were very kind and invited us along.
It was wonderful to see them make a fuss of him when we visited and they presented him with a lovely curved cake in the shape of the building he had designed.
The site is one of TRW’s major European facilities, employing more than 600 people. It is a global company at the forefront of vehicle safety technology, continuing the automotive tradition of the building.
Everything I admire about it is wrapped up in the emotion of having a father, a meek and mild man, who was actually very talented but chose not to shout about it.
The proportions of the building are so elegant and now that the new road goes close up to the front of it, it may begin to get the recognition it deserves. You now have a fabulous view of the entire building from the Stratford Road.
There is a really glorious, stairway entrance that is very graceful. A lot of the design was about getting the light into the laboratories.
What I like most about it is the very slender external columns and minimal glazing sections. Very understated, nothing flash, so very elegant.
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It was wonderful to see them make a fuss of him when we visited and they presented him with a lovely curved cake in the shape of the building he had designed.
