For Open House this weekend I visited twelve different and varied properties, ranging from underwhelm to amazeballs. I'll save the wow until later but here are brief reports on the others, hopefully as testament that exploring otherwise inaccessible spaces is an opportunity not to be missed.
There are also now 42 photos on Flickr if you want see a bit more from my double weekend.
It's always good to visit an architectural practice during Open House because they tend to have really good buildings and can talk about them in depth. This one's for Allies and Morrison on Southwark Street, not far from Tate Modern, and won a RIBA award in 2004 when they moved in. A&M masterplanned the Olympic Park and Kings Cross, amongst many other megaprojects, so I thanked them for the former and kept quiet about the second. We were led round in small groups to tour the building, from the unlofty roof terrace to the in-house model room via at least four different kinds of staircase. Making 3D models of potential layouts is still important to allow designers and clients to understand what's proposed, and the end result is a huge variety of gorgeous mini artworks, many of which are dotted around the offices as either inspiration or decoration. Thanks, I enjoyed this one.
As sustainable green eco-construction goes, a five storey office block made entirely from timber is about as good as it gets, indeed this Shoreditch newcomer is London's tallest fully-engineered timber office building. All the walls and partitions are wooden, be that ribbed bars in the lobby or relentless planking on the stairs. In the basement I made the mistake of gushing about the colour palette to a lady who told me she wasn't an interior designer, she was the architect. On the roof terrace I dodged the deckchairs and watched the Overground rushing bydown below. And all credit to the volunteers who had to keep beeping their smartcards to let us through doors and into lifts, because modern security does not fit with free flow exploration.
307 Regent Street is the birthplace of British cinema because this is where the Lumière brothers premiered their firstshort film outside France in 1896. The Polytechnic Institution had pioneered the presentation of magic lantern shows to a mass audience, and also introduced London to Pepper's Ghost, so was the obvious location for a debut cinematographic demo. The public cinema which followed showed a diet of military films, then diversified into natural history and travelogues before returning to use as an educational space. In 1951 (as the Cameo Polytechnic Cinema) it showed the very first X-rated film in the UK, La Vie Commence Demain, and in the swinging Sixties hosted film premieres before closing again in 1980. Ten years ago a majorrefit added a single rack of seating with space for a foyer underneath and this is now a renowned independent cinema, although still owned by the University of Westminster. Their archivist delivered a profusely illustrated backhistory, and advised that if you want to hear the Comptonorgan it's always played before the matinee on the first Monday of the month.
The shabby arcade cut-through above the District line station at Victoria has been closed for five years for a glow-up but finally reopened last week. TfL are well chuffed with it, not just because they've restored it to its Edwardian glory but because they can make a lot of dosh in rent by leasing out the retail units. So far the only tenant is a cookie shop but the arcade does look good, with ornamental scrolls and marble risers and replica luminaires and inset tiling and one particularly dazzling Art Deco sunburst on the front of the next unit to open. It's already won an award. TfL are so chuffed they made it the subject of last week's only press release, but alas almost no news organisations used it, and perhaps they'd have been more excited if they'd chatted to one of the enthusiastic employees involved in delivering the project like what I did.
I've lost count of how many livery halls I've visited through Open House and have now ticked off five more. The finest were the first and last.
• Apothecaries Hall is the City's oldest livery hall, dating to the late 1660s, and a classic of the genre. It was rammed with liverymen and liverywomen, as well as visitors, requiring a one-way system to usher everyone past the medicine jars, stained glass windows and gilded ephemera.
• Bakers Hall was new on the list this year. They have the first Modernist livery hall, which is the fourth on the same site after fire and bombs got the others. My favourite features were the three John Piper stained glass windows in the Livery Hall, each of which represents a different historic conflagration. Rather less impressive was the table of paid-for refreshments where the biscuits were mass produced and plastic wrapped rather than properly baked. Nobody was biting.
• Coopers Hall occupies a small but splendid Georgian house on the edge of Spitalfields. Barrelmaking isn't common these days so they've had to reinvent themselves somewhat as charitable brethren rather than artisanal supporters.
• Painters Hall has the best portraits on the walls, obviously, although their full-length Queen Elizabeth looks patently wrong and has recently been demoted to a side wall to make way for a much better portrait of her son as Prince as Wales.
• Stationers Hall lurks behind Ludgate Hill and is unexpectedly large, or rather a chain of capacious spaces. The largest is the Great Hall which is bedecked with shields and banners, and where various bookbinders were demonstrating their trade and wares. The livery company represents printers and publishers so not unexpectedly its handout was a booklet which felt luxurious to the touch, I'd say probably 300-350 gsm.
Additionally there were...
The Invisible One: I thought I knew where this was - easily reached through a courtyard - but the gates were locked so I walked all the way around the block and saw no signs so gave up. If I'd read further down the listing I'd have seen I was supposed to walk to the back of a car park and find a hidden entrance there, so I failed and the signage failed.
The Badly Described One: "Come behind the scenes" said the Open House blurb, but when I turned up the patronising lady on the door said "behind the scenes" was only for booked tours and I'd missed those but I could go to the cafe. If it had been described properly I wouldn't have bothered going.
The Too Early One: I had two properties close together but the first didn't last as long as I expected so the second hadn't opened when I arrived. I had to weigh up whether it was worth hanging around for 20 minutes (hmm, it's quite small) and decided not so moved on.
The Bit Late One: I thought there were 45 minutes left but when I finally found the right building the security guard said she was about to close up. She didn't seem too pleased when the tour guide offered to show me round anyway, but I wouldn't have missed much if I'd have been turned away first time.
The Abandoned One: I decided to visit a geographical outlier but on the way there my train broke down, then the train behind us overtook without our driver mentioning this, so my apologies to the far-flung community centre but I gave up and went home.
(and by my calculations that takes me over the 250 mark for Open House Properties I Have Visited Since 2002, hurrah!)
