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?

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[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 ?

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[Stinkie]

Thanks again, TIG. Thanks for the link also.