Drink Gallery

Discussion JLP01_08_061409

COMMONWEALTH INSTITUTE, KENSINGTON HIGH STREET, KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA, GREATER LONDON. Sir James Robertson, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth Institute (right) and two other men drinking beer at the topping out ceremony reception.
Laing built the Commonwealth Institute between October 1960 and October 1962 to replace the former Imperial Institute that was to be demolished to make way for new facilities at Imperial College. The building consisted of a four-storey administrative block housing a library, restaurant, board room and conference hall and a separate two-storey b lock containing a cinema with an art gallery above, but the focus of the project was the exhibition hall with its hyperbolic paraboloid roof, the first of its kind constructed in Great Britain. The exhibition, designed by James Gardner, provided spaces where each of the Commonwealth nations could showcase their achievements and characteristics, primarily to school children as teaching aids to enliven history and geography lessons

© Historic England Archive

Celebration JLP01_09_781626

Peel Common Waste Water Treatment Works, Peel Common, Fareham, Hampshire. A group of workers toasting the launch of a twin barge from Woolston, Hampshire, for use in the construction of the Peel Common Sewage Works outfall at Browndown.
Laing Civil Engineering were contracted to construct the Browndown Outfall for the Southern Water Authority, as part of the South Hampshire Main Drainage Scheme for the treatment and disposal of sewage. Browndown Outfall is a 1km long underwater culvert which transports treated sewage from Peel Common Sewage Works, another contract carried out by Laing. The outfall was built in sections which were linked together in a chain on the seabed. The landward section of the outfall was cast in-situ in a temporary cofferdam

© Historic England Archive. John Laing Photographic Collection