Architecture question

Stinkie

Below is a photograph of a building in, I believe, Croydon, UK. Typical British 60s stuff. Now, I was wondering, what would the window frames be made of? Painted wood? Or painted metal? And the olive greeen, er, spandrels? Some sort of composite material?

TIG

Looks like they are metal frames: steel W20 [just perhaps W30].
http://www.steel-window-association.co.uk/products

Painted, or powder-coated if as late as the 1980s.

Likely to be single-glazed W20 ?

Just possibly aluminum, but unlikely.

The opaque colored 'spandrel' panels would probably have been armour-clad glass - specially painted on the back in various colors.
https://www.pilkington.com/en-gb/uk/products/product-categories/decoration/pilkington-spandrel-glass

Stinkie

Thanks, TIG!

sfto1

The frames look like natural anodized aluminum extrusions to me. The spandrels could be glass as TIG suggests, or they could be a "honeycombed core" painted aluminum panel. I cannot speak about construction in the UK, but the aluminum curtain wall system was wildly popular in the US throughout the 60s.

Stinkie

Thx.

TIG

A lot of cheap offices in the UK were made with the galvanized steel W20 single-glazing system up until the early 1980s, although by then powder-coating rather than painting was becoming more common.
I think the clues are in the central farming profile used to join the parts, and the rust staining at junctions.

I'm pretty sure about the glass spandrels - it looks like a standard gray-green - perhaps bleached by the sun over the decades ?

Stinkie

Thanks again, TIG. Thanks for the link also.