Sainsbury Supermarket

Nicholas Grimshaw
1988-90
These photographs were taken in 2003.




Sainsbury's, the UK's third-largest supermarket chain

This project included the supermarket, car parking and childcare facilities, and residential apartments on the canal side (see below). It is located in a former industrial area of north London with a variety of architectural styles from Georgian residences to Victorian industrial buildings. Grimshaw's style is often characteried as high tech modern and as Grimshaw put it referring to this design, "We didn't waver one inch from our belief in our new palet of materials and in modernism generally. The structure really, even if I say so myself, is a bit of a tour de force. ... You can see these great ties coming down and it sort of gives the building, I think, an enormous kind of strength and impact in the street instead of being a sort of bland box."

The retail store has an open plan with an arched roof. A series of columns sit at the periphery of the sales area. "On top of these are huge brackets, pointing into the sales floor, and the arches for the sales area roof are supported off these. Vertical tie rods, on the outside of the brackets, counter the weight of the arches. All the support accommodation is then carried off the top of the brackets. A true High-Tech solution." See the section drawing of the interior structure from V and A collections.


 

High tech facade

 
 
 
Wikipedia photograph of the canal side apartments by Photographer: User:Justinc


Click here to return to index of art historical sites.

Click here to return to index of artists and architects.

Click here to return to chronological index.

Click here to see the home page of Bluffton University.


© 2015 Mary Ann Sullivan. I have photographed (on site), scanned, and manipulated all the images on these pages. Please feel free to use them for personal or educational purposes. They are not available for commercial purposes.