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.
Here are two Open House buildings that are open all year round, but which I didn't realise were open all year round until they appeared in the Open House listings. So you could go today.
A lot of new buildings smooth the acquisition of planning permission by promising public access to their uppermost storeys. The Post Building is one such, its 9th floor roof terrace open to everyone seven days a week but only if you know it's there, and prior to Open House they hadn't exactly been screaming about it. In good news the 9th floor is high enough to get some stunning views and in better news there's unlikely ever to be a queue.
The Post Building used to be the Post Office's West Central District Office, a concrete bulwark with a Mail Rail station in the basement. That closed around 20 years ago, was demolished six years ago and in its place has arisen a generic office block slotted between High Holborn and New Oxford Street. The marketing team claim it's "sitting at the junction of London’s five most vibrant and historically rich neighbourhoods", pure bolx which can only mean they haven't filled all the floors yet. But all you have to do is turn up between 10am and 7pm (or dusk if earlier) and find the door halfway down the north side.
The entrance lobby is very small, as befits somewhere not built for the benefit of paying clients. The architects retained a bit of one of the parcel slides, that's the painted spiral on your left, although I can confirm it looked a lot more impressive in situ. You'll need to wave some ID (I got away with a bank card) and have your bags checked, then walk through a beepy arch because security is key. And then it's into the lift, which because you're a pleb only has buttons for the 9th and ground floors so you can't accidentally wander into the Nationwide Building Society's tech hub inbetween. The lift's not fast. Also you probably won't meet anyone at the top, let alone a surprised nextdoor neighbour which was my unexpected exit experience.
A considerable roof terrace is available to explore, along three sides of the building and set across two levels, so if your initial reaction is "oooh!" it gets even better once you step up. The western half of the terrace is reserved for employees only so the best views are in all the other directions, but that won't stop you from seeing vistas you won't have enjoyed before. I hate to mention Midtown, the failed branding experiment for this immediate area, but it's precisely because you're in a lowrise zone midway between the West End and the City that the skyline has space to breathe.
North is the big surprise because the British Museum is only a few streets away and entirely unobscured, other than the steeple of St George's Bloomsbury (which isn't exactly a negative). In the centre is the glass roof added by Foster + Partners for the millennium, undulating like a giant (lime-flavoured) blancmange. This surrounds the nipply dome of the Round Reading Room and behind that is the side of Senate House. Throw in the full stalk of the BT Tower, some nearer Georgian terraces and a Hampstead backdrop, and this is a whole new perspective to enjoy.
The City rises to the east in a proper cluster, alas behind some of Holborn's uglier derivative offices. You can see how the Walkie Talkie stands alone, which is good because this allows the heart of Docklands to poke through in the gap, just behind the dome of St Paul's. The Gherkin is entirely obscured, alas, indeed this isn't the City's prettiest flank. But you can also tick off the Barbican, Broadgate and the Orbit way off in the Olympic Park, and if you spin round the other way there's Wembley's arch, an obligatory staple of the rooftop experience.
South is a bit more generic, enlivened only by Freemason's Hall, and beyond that the Shard of course, the South Bank's towers and an eruption at Elephant and Castle. The turrety tops of the Palace of Westminster are sandwiched between the roof of Charing Cross station and the pustules at Vauxhall, although you'll need a better camera than mine to do that justice. As for the chimneys at Battersea Power Station they're a lot further to the right than you might expect, behind the trees in St James's Park, indeed this is a great vantage point from which to reconsider your mental map of London.
More practically, yes they've provided toilets. Also look out for the anemometers because roof access closes if wind speeds exceed 25mph. No, it's not as amazing as a free trip up the Walkie Talkie but you can go any time rather than pre-booking and finding yourself in a long line of savvy tourists. Also it must be good because Ian Visits and M@ from Londonist have also just been, also nudged by Open House, as if everyone's discovered the Post Building at the same time. Discover it yourself.
I've been a lot slower to this one, Ian visited in 2015 and Londonist made a video in 2020. It's a proper dazzler, a Gothic chapel built to serve the Middlesex Hospital, the rest of which was demolished in 2008. The chapel then sat alone on a levelled site while a surrounding redevelopment project came and went (NoHo? no thanks) so is now the centrepiece of a different millionaires' hideaway (ideal for those who want to live in a flat within walking distance of Oxford Street). From outside in Pearson Square it's no great shakes. Once inside it'samazing.
No hospital needs a chapel this glitzy, but all the funding came from benefactors so they could be as lavish as they wished. The walls are sheathed in coloured marble, the ceiling covered with golden mosaics, the lectern carved in alabaster and the font carved from a solid block of verd antique. Throw in plenty of decorative Latin text, an organ loft and several stained glass windows, and it's a surprise to discover the chapel was never officially consecrated as a place of worship. I was also intrigued to see that Mr Kipling's coffin laid in rest here, but it was only Rudyard, not the purveyor of cakes.
A building like this isn't cheap to maintain so they're very happy to see donations, or perhaps you'd fancy something from the bookstall table. Inevitably it's available for weddings but also exhibitions, fashion shoots, product launches, concerts, filming, corporate hire and (if you're a wealthy narcissist) proposing to your beloved. I confess it did look exquisite lit by flickering candles. But every Wednesday they open up to the general public between 11 and 4, so you could go today and see what's essentially a nave dressed up beyond the limits of excess.
Sometimes your eye skates past a name on the Open House list because you've seen it before. The gate that once marked the entrance to the City? Seen it in Hertfordshire, seen it back by St Paul's. But closer scrutiny suggested something more special - hang on, they're inviting us inside? - and so I returned.
Temple Bar spans the gap between Paternoster Square and the cathedral, alongside a squat redbrick building that's better known as the location of basement public conveniences. Several American tourists initially mistook the Open House queue for the line for the loo. The entrance, it turned out, was via an anonymous door between the ladies and the gents and then up 30 winding steps to a room on the first floor. Unexpectedly this small chamber is the new livery hall of The Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects, even though only a small fraction of them could fit inside. Open House managed seats for 20, plus a short talk from the beadle before being called to the Bar.
Grant ran us through a history of Temple Bar on his iPad, alas unable to connect to the huge screen in the wall behind. He showed us the arch in its original location propped over Fleet Street, its dilapidated state at Theobalds and Lady Meux being pulled by zebras. He ran us round the commemorative plates on the wall designed annually by architects. He mentioned it's the 300th anniversary of Christopher Wren's death next year so expect several commemorative events. He harvested our email addresses for his mailing list and tried to flog us £12 bags of his son's specially ground coffee, because in the City the mercantile instinct runs deep. And then were allowed up a further short flight of stairs to a footbridge hidden behind heraldic beasts and into the main chamber.
The upper room's not big although it does contain a lot of wasted height. In its original location above Fleet Street it used to be used to store the records of a neighbouring bank. Today it's an empty space with a tiled floor, grey walls, orange curtains and a minimum of windows. Plaques give thanks to the other livery companies who contributed to the rebuild, including the Fishmongers, the Wyre Drawers and the Makers of Playing Cards. A paperweight containing lead from the original roof hangs by the door. We were told by the Chair of Trustees that a grand gate-opening ceremony had been planned for last Friday, attended by the Lord Mayor, but the Queen's death the day before had caused that to be postponed. He also reminded us that the room can be hired out for dinners (16 seated) or buffets (35 standing), there being a super little oven installed over in the main building. Open House visitors have been the first lucky members of the public to get inside.
This one's been on the Open House list since last century so I thought it was about time I went. The Ismaili are a branch of the Muslim faith on the Shia side, a schism defined by who you believe to be the true successor to the prophet Mohammed, which in their case is the Aga Khan. Their London centre was opened in 1985 by PM Margaret Thatcher and is a 'No Photography' venue, so all you're getting is a shot of the outside. The interior's been designed as a rising spiral, from the heptagonal fountain in the entrance hall, beneath low honeycombed ceilings, up the stairs round the glass chandelier, past the racks where you leave your shoes and finally passing through teak doors into the prayer hall. Every Open House venue has one detail the guides over-repeat and here it's all about how the design on the carpet changes, and becomes less busy, the further up you go.
My guide was nervous but excellent, pointing out the lapis lazuli portrait, the one-way tinted windows and the ahead-of-its time wheelchair ramp. The biggest treat was the roof garden, quartered by streams of running water and overlooked by the domes of the Natural History Museum and the V&A. I was a little less impressed by the prayer hall because its function is to gather rather than to wow, but would never have spotted the Arabic words reflected in the panelling had they not been pointed out. The entire building is a symphony of geometrical design, and quite the visual statement for what's essentially a West London community centre.
This is a genuine West London community centre, and a very recent one having been completed in summer 2020 (but delayed in opening due to 'events'). It's comprised of several interconnected pavilions with monopitched roofs clustered around a previously-derelict lodge. Its big tick is sustainability, being comprised of reformulated glulam frames and green-stained timber, and sometimes looks as unfinished as the inside of a loft. One section is a community cafe (sandwiches, paninis, homemade soup), another a shower block for those playing in the adjacent park and another was being hastily cleared away after a young child's birthday party.
Its triumph of form and function has been recognised by reaching the shortlist for 2022 RIBA Stirling Prize: "the architects have met the brief and budget with confidence and inventiveness, delivering a highly sustainable, delightful and flexible asset for the client". We'll see if it wins in mid-October although I suspect it won't, it didn't feel special nor indeed especially memorable, just a building doing what's necessary for the local community with as light a footprint as possible.
Just opposite Imperial Wharf station, and currently sheathed in scaffolding, is one of a small number of UK buildings designed by Zaha Hadid. It's not really a gallery at all, more a shop with additional space for the display of artworks, indeed it's really a jumped-up bathroom showroom. Roca make bathroom fittings for the luxury end of the market, as you can tell because none of their products are priced, so are very much the Bang & Olufsen of sanitary porcelainware. But with Zaha as architect this is no ordinary shop - more like being inside a huge swoosh of splashy water shooting off in all directions - and of course not a straight line in sight.
Various pods erupt from the wall like fisheyes, and may be used to display bowls or metal plughole covers. A complete suite of matching basins lurks behind a wall in an ivory cavern, the showerhead of your dreams hangs from a contoured surface and omg what is that bathtub it looks like the tackiest cascade of twisty ribbed plastic. A retrospective of Hadid's smaller designs fills the exhibition spaces, including furniture, high-heeled shoes and a crystal chess set in the shapes of Emirati towers, which perhaps gives a hint of the intended audience. Photography was not allowed, save surreptitiously through the fire exit door, so it's hard to describe how alien an environment this is. But don't come if you're having trouble paying your energy bill because you may just find the unbridled showmanship offensive.
