On your left, look for a big, curved block wrapped in dark, mirror-like glass, with soft rounded corners and a hint of green along the roofline.
This is the Willis Building, and it still feels like it landed here from the better-dressed future. Built between 1970 and 1975 as the regional headquarters for Willis Faber and Dumas, it was designed by Norman Foster and Wendy Cheesman just as their practice-Foster Associates-was hitting its stride. Ipswich got a front-row seat to what later got called “high tech” architecture: sleek materials, clever engineering, and a kind of confident practicality that says, “Yes, this is an office… but it’s trying.”
Notice how it refuses to do neat right angles. That bulbous footprint wasn’t a stylistic whim-it’s the building taking the shape of its tight city-center site, squeezed between busy road junctions and the nearby Unitarian Meeting House. Two Grade I listed neighbors, side by side… one is historic and polite, and this one wears smoked glass and doesn’t apologize.
Structurally, it’s a grid of concrete columns spaced about 14 meters apart, holding up cantilevered floor slabs-three open-plan office levels for roughly 1,300 people. Inside, there’s a central escalator spine leading up to a rooftop staff restaurant and garden with a full panorama of town.
And yes, there was once a staff swimming pool for lunch breaks. It’s covered now-preserved under the floor because listing rules don’t do “just fill it in.”
It opened on June 2, 1975, with Harold Macmillan doing the honors, and by 1991 it was Grade I listed-shockingly young for that level of protection.
When you’re set, St Pancras Church is about a 7-minute walk heading east, going through one roundabout.
