Report - Ordnance Survey, Southampton - July 2011

[AnotherMansCause]

Visited with Chrisr86.

Ordnance Survey, an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain (and to an extent, the Isle of Man), and one of the world's largest producers of maps.

The Ordnance Survey head office complex was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1969 and was designed by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works for a total of 4,000 staff.
When the complex opened, it was described in an official booklet as ‘A simple and unpretentious expression of function and construction’. In other words, copious amounts of concrete and glass and architecturally boring.

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The main building on the site is the William Roy Building, formally known as Central Block, which housed production areas, conference facilities and offices.

Unfortunately, the rest of the building looked pretty much identical to this, same layout, the only difference being the colour of the columns. This, I suppose, is the problem with the offices only being relocated as opposed to being closed down completely.


Thankfully, there were some nice pipes to look at when we ventured right to the top of the building.

In late 2010 and early 2011, Ordnance Survey moved to a new building, Explorer House at Adanac Park, about a mile or so away from Maybush. The Maybush campus was closed down by Ordnance Survey on Friday 4 March 2011.


Finally, an explore of an Ordnance Survey building wouldn't be complete without at least one map!

 

[chrisr86]

Yeah it's great in a way, but as is often the way with modern buildings it's so similar throughout it doesn't have the personality of many others. It's more the scale of it that's interesting.

Gooooood morning Ordnance Survey

Lonely server - RobbieKhan will enjoy this.

Layout of the building, to give an appreciation of the size!

This is pretty much the standard view throughout the building, just different coloured as AMC said. Also, peekaboo!

And finally, I liked this one - showing map regions and their OS codes