Four final Open House reports, not because you should visit but as further examples of just how much you can see if you embrace the opportunities.
Open House:6 Moretown (Gensler London Studio) (Wapping/St Katharine's)
80s office developments look a bit passé today, so what they've done beside Wapping's Waitrose is rename it Moretown and refurbish one of the blocks. Architects like to work in a signature building they've designed themselves, and so it is with international firm Gensler's London HQ. On our tour of the building they pointed out the extra heft they've added on the front, the sample library on the ground floor, the teapoints where everyone mingles and the flashier top deck with views of the Gherkin. Essentially it's just a lot of hotdesks arranged so employees don't mind coming into work, but that's the modern office for you. Best bit: the hipster 80s playlist echoing up from the cafe
Open House:Pennington Street Warehouse (Wapping/Shadwell)
Another Wapping street, another architectural practice. This lot are JTP and they've carved out a chunk of former spice warehouse near Tobacco Dock to create their bespoke hotdesking space. Thanks to Open House I'd been here in 2015 when the vaults were empty so could confirm they'd transformed the brickwork with sensitivity. It proved quite a challenge to bring light into a listed building with no windows. We got a 30 minute tour here too, definitely friendlier than the last place, although the architect did have a tendency to mansplain what the new starter had just told us. Best bit: discovering they filmed The Apprentice 2021 final here
Open House:Darbishire Place (Wapping/Whitechapel)
Sometimes you turn up at an Open House building and are sucked into a lengthy tour, other times you get to meet a volunteer outside and they let you take a brief look in the stairwell. It was, admittedly, an attractive stairwell with a jaunty wiggle, but maybe not worth the walk. Still, a nice example of affordable housing shoehorned into an awkwardly thin footprint on an 1880s Peabody estate, and all in characteristically vernacular style. Best bit: my only Open House photo to get double-figure likes on Instagram
Open House:Cromwell Place (South Kensington)
Five Georgian terraces near the Natural History Museum have been joined at the rear by a modern 'link bridge', their individual rooms forming galleries for the temporary showing-off of art and products. If you have the money for that designer sofa, that gourd-topped ceramic or that painting of a washing-up rack, good luck to you. The highlight, overlapping with the London Design Festival, was a dynamic reflective light tunnel with infinite gifworthy perspectives. It was also interactive but only the techies who'd made it knew that, so the rest of us just stood still snapping. Best bit: conquering my imposter syndrome in this parallel trendster universe
And for comparison, here's full bloggage from my first Open House weekend 20 years ago...
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Westminster Hall: Now that the Queen Mother has moved on, there were hardly any queues. I stood on the spot where her artificial hip had lain in state, just out of respect you understand. Portcullis House: The new office block for MPs, famous for its fig trees imported at a cost of £150,000. If you're a UK taxpayer, you'll be glad to know none of them look as if they need replacing yet. Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Magnificent and opulent courtyards and staircases. I suspect we bled the Empire dry to pay for it all. Cabinet Office: Had to queue for one and a half hours, but well worth it just to see the door that Sir Humphrey couldn't get through when his key was confiscated in Yes Prime Minister. It has a card swipe now, by the way. Midland Hotel, St Pancras: Glorious old hotel, now fallen into serious disrepair. I suspect it never recovered after the Spice Girls recorded the video for Wannabe there. Zig-a-zig-ah.
