Bletchley Leisure Centre walkway
A customized Stripes (Letraset, 1973) for the lettering on the curving tunnel walkway at Bletchley Leisure Centre. The number of stripes in Tony Wenman’s multiline typeface was reduced from eight to four, and filled in four colors, without interspace.
Bletchley Leisure Centre was built between 1972 and 1976 by architects Faulkner-Brown, Hendy, Watkinson, Stonor (renamed in the 1980s to FaulknerBrowns) and opened in 1973. This example of modern municipal architecture is best known for its oddly shaped swimming pool enclosed in a galvanised steel pyramid. In 1975, it saw an average of 40,000 visitors per month. The raised walkway constructed of glass-reinforced plastic connected a multi-storey car park with the leisure complex, leading straight to the first floor entrance. Despite a preservation campaign the center was demolished in 2010 and replaced with a new one by Holder Mathias Architects.
More about Bletchley Leisure Centre and FaulknerBrowns at Living North, Eaton Mill Overspill CLUTCH, and Modernism in Metroland. See additional images in the RIBA Architecture Library.
In 2009, shortly before the pyramid was demolished, too, Matt Norman took a picture of the location where the elevated walkway once was.
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See also the signs for Pinturas Dekora and Almacenes Florida, both in Zaragoza, for more examples of Stripes in multicolored use with a reduced number of lines.