Listening to Sarah Montague’s interview with Kevin McCloud on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One last month, I found myself reflecting on a question that has followed warehousing for centuries: why do we admire the industrial buildings of the past whilst dismissing those of the present?
The discussion centred on a new design competition for data centres. McCloud argued that Victorian industrialists built “temples to industry” whereas modern warehouses and fulfilment centres are often “thrown up as sheds”. Referring to large logistics buildings, he rudely described them as “the scrag end of manufacturing” and suggested they are merely storage depots for goods made elsewhere.
As someone who has spent much of my career in logistics and is currently researching the history of warehousing, I see things rather differently.
The idea that warehouses are somehow an inferior form of industrial architecture is not supported by history. In fact, they have often been among the most important commercial buildings in Britain. The great dock warehouses of Liverpool, the commercial warehouses of Manchester and the bonded warehouses of Bristol that underpinned international trade were every bit as significant as the factories and mills that receive more attention from historians and architects.
Indeed, many of the Victorian warehouses that are admired today were criticised when they were built. Developments such as St Katharine Docks transformed neighbourhoods, displaced communities and provoked fierce debate. The handsome brick warehouses that tourists photograph today were once viewed by many as intrusive symbols of industrialisation and commercial power.
History suggests that every generation romanticises the industrial buildings of its predecessors whilst criticising those of its own time.
What is often overlooked is that modern warehouses are not simply buildings. They are part of wider places and communities. Many are developed on neglected brownfield sites or poor-quality land. They bring placemaking: international investment in roads, drainage, utilities, landscaping and biodiversity improvements. And they bring employment: good jobs and opportunities for social mobility. Whether one likes the architecture or not, new industrial buildings frequently leave an area more ordered, accessible and economically productive than before.
Personally, I find many modern warehouses beautiful.
Not because they are decorated with Gothic flourishes or Victorian ornamentation, but because they possess qualities that have always inspired admiration in great industrial buildings: scale, confidence, purpose and clarity. There is something undeniably impressive about a modern logistics facility stretching across the landscape, handling millions of products and supporting thousands of jobs. These are the cathedrals of a logistics age.
Beauty, of course, is subjective. Yet it is worth remembering that William Morris once described the medieval tithe barn at Great Coxwell as one of the most beautiful buildings in England. It was, fundamentally, a storage building. The Roman horrea that supplied cities and armies, the medieval tithe barns that stored agricultural produce and the modern fulfilment centres that support e-commerce all share a common purpose: preserving value across time.
Perhaps future generations will look at today’s warehouses in much the same way that we now look at Victorian mills and dock warehouses. History suggests they just might.
Clare Bottle
UKWA, CEO
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