Patera Building

In 1980, Michael Hopkins[1][2] architects and Anthony Hunt Associates engineers were instructed by LIH (Properties) Ltd to design a relocatable building 216 square metres in size.

The article does not cover 'Patera Building System'[3] (a later development of the Patera concept using several of the fabrication techniques such as the innovative panels, but with alternative traditional structural frames).

[10][11][12] To support panels struck by automotive industry hydraulic presses, constituent parts of the Patera Building structure were pin-jointed for ease of handling and assembly.

The Patera Building prototype was built on drained and reclaimed land there, circumstances that informed the design - requiring lightness of weight and raft foundations.

In the 1960s visionary architect Cedric Price[15][16] had proposed a Potteries Thinkbelt design which sought to make use of decommissioned railway routes following the Beeching Cuts and the scarred landscape of coal mining to provide linked learning centres for a technical industry-based curriculum.

[20] In 1989, to make way for the much heralded high rise commercial developed planned for Canary Wharf, Limehouse TV Studios was compulsorily purchased and demolished,[21] and one of the two Patera Buildings (the original prototype) was moved to its third location on Albert Island.

[24] The other, the second-ever standard Patera Building, was moved from its Canary Wharf site in c1989 to become a part of the LDDC temporary offices adjacent to the Docklands Light Railway close to Royal Victoria Dock.

If the application had been successful, the Docklands Patera Building would have been carefully stabilised, conserved and moved once more to make way for development in the London Royal Docks Enterprise Zone.

Interested parties associated with the listing process have accepted that the Docklands Patera Building is in fact the original 1982 prototype manufactured and first assembled in Stoke-on-Trent.