With over 700 buildings opening up to the public, this weekend's Open House London provides another chance to venture into the usually off-limits parts of some the capital's most intriguing buildings.
The event, now in its 23rd year, regularly attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors. It is possible to gain access to everything from the grandeur of the Foreign Office building in Whitehall and the skyscrapers in the City of London through to, out in the boroughs, humbler-in-scale, but often equally inspiring, eco-homes, pumping stations, offices and the like.
Getting the most out of the weekend
With so much to see – all free of charge – it can be hard to know where to start. Here, then, are some tips on how to enjoy to the fullest what the weekend has to offer.
Plan your campaign. Check out the official listings on the Open House website. This gives details of all the participating sites (you can, alternatively, purchase the mobile app or a printed programme), including vital information such as when each building is open, whether advance booking is required (it is in only around 10% of cases) and whether any talks or guided tours are being given. Tours by the architect who designed the place are obviously worth catching, but so are those given by clients and end-users: it is always interesting to hear from, say, a teacher about the challenges of staff and childern living through the construction of shiny new extension on a cramped school site and what, in practice, works well about the design, and (if they are candid) what works less well.
Take on a single borough. Most buildings are open for a fairly narrow time-slot, say two or three hours, generally, from experience, clustered around the period 10am to 4pm. If you are visiting several places, therefore, you don't really want to be spending precious hours criss-crossing the city. A good strategy, then, is to focus on a single geographic area: not only does this minimise travel time, but it makes the job of deciding what to see less daunting. Handily, the listings on the Open House website can be filtered by borough. There is definitely (I find, at least) a degree of nerdy-pleasure to be had in plotting out a route that takes in the most places in the least travelling distance. It's worth thinking about bringing your bike: cycling can be a satisfyingly speedy way of getting from location to the next, particularly if you pick a borough outside of Central London where the traffic is less heavy.
Say hi to your fellow Open House-ers. You can generally spot other people enjoying the event marching down the streets clutching their programmes emblazoned with the green Open House logo. They can be a great source of information about what's worth seeing, last minute changes to the programme and how to actually get to the place that you've been walking up and down the same street for the last 15 minutes to find...
Don't leave your critical faculties at home. Don't feel you are under some sort of obligation to walk around all of the buildings in a state of rapt wonder: something that organisers of Open House stress is that a key goal is to empower us members of the public to make our own judgements about design through “direct experience”, so that we can all contribute to the debate. As the organisation's website puts it, in an apparent (and welcome) side-swipe at the glossy consultation document, that default mode of public 'engagement' in the development process: “You can't make an informed decision merely through abstract images, such as photos and illustrations. You need to be engaged with the space in question to know what the reality is.” Obviously, avoid being hostile or rude to those who are volunteering access to their buildings and their own time for the event, but feel free to ask probing questions about energy-efficiency or the reactions of neighbours to the development!
What to see
Four less-well known, but fascinating places to visit:
Darbishire Place, Whitechapel, E3. A rare example of an attractively-designed, elegant social housing block, shortlisted for and very much in the running to win this year's RIBA Stirling Prize.
Kingsley Hall, Bromley-by-Bow, E3. An East End community hall with a lively history. It paid host to Mahatma Gandhi during his visit to the country in 1931, and the room he stayed in has been preserved as a secular shrine, complete with spinning kit. Later, in the 1960s, the building housed people suffering from psychosis under the controversial aegis of RD Laing, champion of the anti-psychiatry movement. 
Pullman Court, Streatham Hill, SW2. Dating from the 1930s and designed by Fredrick Gibberd (the master-architect of Harlow), this is one of the earliest modernist apartment developments in Britain: a set of gleaming white blocks with sleek, cantilevered balconies and elegant metal railings.
St Botolph Building, Aldgate, EC3. Less high-profile than other, taller, buildings that have shot up in the capital's financial central in recent years, this Grimshaw-designed office is still an impressive edifice, and filled with uber-cool High Tech fittings and gadgetry inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment