Compass Centre is an office building on the grounds of Heathrow Airport in the London Borough of Hillingdon. The building serves as Heathrow Airport Holdings's head office. [1] Compass Centre previously served as a British Airways flight crew centre. [2]
The Compass Centre was originally conceived as speculative offices for Lynton plc, which was the property development division of Heathrow Airport Limited. British Airways was a prospective but not necessarily a sole tenant. The airline decided to consolidate its scattered operations into the Compass Centre. [3] In August 1992 on-site construction began. The building was completed 15 months later. [4]
When Heathrow Terminal 5 opened on 27 March 2008, British Airways staff, including crew check-in staff, relocated from the Compass Centre to Terminal 5. [5] A refurbishment of the head office was completed in September 2009, after Heathrow Airport Limited (then BAA) moved into the building. [6]
The Compass Centre was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners, which designed the core, external works, and shell of the building. Compass Centre is alongside but slightly askew from Heathrow's northern runway, with the Northern Perimeter Road, T5 Long Stay car park and Compass Centre car park between the runway and the Compass Centre. In 1995 Penny McGuire of The Architectural Review said that "Its shining glass and bright blue clad exterior reminds you, particularly when seen glowing at night, that one of the largest and busiest airports in the world is otherwise encumbered with a really grim collection of buildings. Decent ones are a rare sight around here." [3] It was designed to house up to 800 British Airways employees. British Airways wanted a large, on-airport facility close to its operations, so it decided to use the Compass Centre. [4]
Compass Centre consists of a linear arrangement of three connected blocks; East, Meridian (placed in the middle) and West, with Meridian slightly larger than the other two. Each block has three floors and is split again into North and South sides, with Meridian having a glass atrium. The arrangement provides a claimed 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2) of office space.
The design stems from a client's request for a building that could be easily divided between tenants. [3] The building can accommodate sub-letting and flexibility involving several tenants. [4] Reinforced concrete was used to construct the structural frame due to economy, fire resistance, and speed. The frame has a raked roof slab and circular columns. Glass was the primary material used to construct the shell, [3] because glass has little radar interference, [4] and in the words of McGuire, can be "acoustically efficient." [3] The design limits heat gain and solar glare, and the building environment is sound-proofed. [4]
The British Council for Offices awarded the building the "Best Delivered Workplace." [4] In 2008, ownership passed from BAA to Arora Group, and in 2021, it was sold to Prologis. [7]
The building has its own restaurant on the first floor of the West Block, and a Costa Coffee concession on the Meridian ground floor under the glass atrium. The Meridian ground floor also houses a visitors suite with a number of meeting rooms secured separately to the staff-only access of the rest of the building. The ground floor of West block is normally used as a training centre with its own entrance and reception. During the Covid-19 pandemic, West Block was reconfigured for the vaccination rollout, handling more than 100,000 people in less than 2 years. [8]
Compass Centre also hosts Heathrow Airport's Operation Centre (second floor, East Block). Opened in 2014, it hosts all the key functions of the airport (Security, Engineering, Police, Fire, IT etc.) in one place, along with a video wall containing 60 flatscreen panels. [9]
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Heathrow Terminal 4 is an airport terminal at Heathrow Airport, the main airport serving London, England, situated to the south of the southern runway, next to the cargo terminal. It is connected to Heathrow Terminals 2 and 3 by the vehicular Heathrow Cargo Tunnel, and by rail with the Heathrow Terminal 4 tube and Heathrow Terminal 4 railway stations. The terminal was temporarily closed in 2020. Built at a cost of £200 million, Terminal 4 was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales on 1 April 1986. British Airways was the main airline operating from the terminal from 1986 until its move to Terminal 5 on 29 October 2009, eventually making Terminal 4 the Heathrow base for airlines of the SkyTeam airline alliance.
Heathrow Terminal 3 is an airport terminal at Heathrow Airport, serving London, the capital city of the United Kingdom. Terminal 3 is currently used as one of the main global hubs of the International Airlines Group members British Airways and Iberia since 12 July 2022. It is also used by the majority of members of the Oneworld and a few SkyTeam alliances along with several long-haul non-affiliated airlines. It is also the base for Virgin Atlantic.
Heathrow Terminal 1 is a disused airport terminal at London Heathrow Airport that was in operation between 1968 and 2015. When it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in April 1969 it was the largest new airport terminal in western Europe. At the time of its closure on 29 June 2015 to make way for the expansion of Heathrow Terminal 2 it had been handling only twenty daily flights by British Airways to nine destinations. From May 2017 the contents of the terminal were put up for auction.
The Beehive is the original terminal building at Gatwick Airport, England. Opened in 1936, it became obsolete in the 1950s as the airport expanded. In 2008, it was converted into serviced offices, operated by Orega, having served as the headquarters of franchised airline GB Airways for some years before that. It was the world's first fully integrated airport building, and is considered a nationally and internationally important example of airport terminal design. The Beehive is a part of the City Place Gatwick office complex. The 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) former terminal building is on a 2-acre (0.81 ha) site.
Grimshaw Architects is an architectural firm based in London. Founded in 1980 by Nicholas Grimshaw, the firm was one of the pioneers of high-tech architecture. In particular, they are known for their design of transport projects including Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA railway station, Waterloo International railway station and the award-winning Southern Cross railway station which was the recipient of the Royal Institute of British Architects Lubetkin Prize. Grimshaw is behind the design of the Sustainability Pavilion, an innovative net-zero building, for Expo 2020. The firm currently has offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Dubai, Melbourne and Sydney, employing over 600 staff.
City Place Gatwick is an office complex located on the property of London Gatwick Airport in Crawley, West Sussex, England. The complex includes four buildings: The Beehive, an approximately 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) former terminal building at Gatwick Airport located on a 2.0-acre (0.81 ha) site; 1 City Place a 131,500-square-foot (12,220 m2) facility on a 4.2-acre (1.7 ha) site, 2 City Place, a 85,000-square-foot (7,900 m2) building on a 1.9 acres (0.77 ha) plot, and 3 City Place, a 65,000-square-foot (6,000 m2) building on a 1.06-acre (0.43 ha) plot. Hamiltons Architects designed the "L" shaped 3 City Place.
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The West London Air Terminal was a check-in facility for British European Airways flights from Heathrow Airport. It was located on Cromwell Road in Kensington, London, and was in operation from 6 October 1957 to 1 January 1974. After passengers checked in their baggage and received their boarding passes, they would travel to Heathrow Airport by coach. One of the drawbacks of using the terminal for checking in was that road traffic could delay the coaches and ultimately delay the departure of the flight.
Gatwick Airport was in Surrey until 1974, when it became part of West Sussex as a result of a county boundary change. The original, pre-World War II airport was built on the site of a manor in the parish of Charlwood. The land was first used as an aerodrome in the 1920s, and in 1933 commercial flights there were approved by the Air Ministry.
The St Botolph Building is a commercial office in Houndsditch, central London, opened in 2011 and designed by Grimshaw Architects.
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