Some buildings are on the Open House list every year and I always mean to go but never do. So this year I did two of them.
Open House:Royal Geographical Society Follow Exhibition Road right to the end, past the Natural History and Science Museums, and you'll reach Kensington Gore. At number 1, overlooking Hyde Park, is Lowther House, since 1913 the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society. The RGS is rather older than that, born out of gentlemen's dining clubs, for the advancement of geographical learning. Many a global expedition has been planned here, including the first successful assault on Everest, although modern patrons are more likely to surf to the Himalayas than actually visit. Anyone can enter the exhibition pavilion out front (currently home to an excellent display of People in London). But to walk in off the street and explore beyond requires booking an event, membership, or waiting for the third weekend in September. [3 photos]
Many great discoveries have been announced in the lecture theatre, although the current version is a relatively recent sponsored revamp and a little gloomy. The names of various organisations and luminaries have been carved into the staircase to balcony level, including the last but one President Michael Palin CBE. Climb a little further to discover the Members' Room, whose bookshelves and alcoves are named after the continents and regions of the world, but whose contents turned out to be two centuries of geographical journals. More interesting is the ground floor Map Room, a treasure trove of globes and portraits, plus a scale model of the Everest massif - alas not a Hillary original. In common with many delicate artefacts at the RGS this is emblazoned with officious messages warning bystanders not to touch, or in this case not to place their canapés and wine glasses on the Khumbu Icefall.
I've often thought that if I was ever going to join a London-based organisation the Royal Geographical Society might be for me. I used to subscribe to their monthly Geographical magazine as a sixth former, and there were current copies lying around as freebies for Open Housers to purloin. But a visit reminded me that the RGS is as much about mud hut villages as oxbow lakes, and aligned more towards adventure than armchair travel, so the £127 annual membership subscription probably wouldn't be worthwhile. Maybe. Oh we'll see.
Open House:The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Despite sounding like it ought to have been around for centuries, the UK's Supreme Court is barely five years old. It was established out of the Constitutional Reform Act which split parliament and the judiciary, creaming off a dozen Law Lords to arbitrate in the trickiest cases in the land. They never sentence, only decide, and thus far only one of the twelve is a Lady. And the court's location could hardly be better, poised between church and state on the corner of Parliament Square opposite Westminster Abbey. This is the former MiddlesexGuildhall, completed in 1913, the seat of government for London's lost county. Much of the interior was ripped out when the building was redesigned, but the surviving remainder looks a lot older than it is thanks to its art nouveau gothic styling. Queue for the security patdown on Open House Open Day and you'll be given pretty much free rein to roam inside. [6 photos]
First up beyond the lobby is the main library, a stunningtriple-height space stacked with legal tomes. And then there are three court rooms, the largest of which is on the top floor. This was originally the main council chamber, now with less adversarial seating, beneath an impressive hammerbeam roof. Court 2 is rather more plain and modern, with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote etched into the glass facing into, and away from, the main corridor. Both courts strongly feature the court's logo, a quartered circle featuring stylised versions of the national symbols of the four Home Nations. It's simple but very attractive, and I fear most of the carpets in the building would have had to have been torn out had Scotland voted for independence last week. Or perhaps cases would have shifted to Court 3, where commonwealth and dependency cases are heard, be that for the Bahamas, the Falklands or the Isle of Man.
Members of the public are welcome to visit the building during opening hours, and to sit at the back of the courts when a case is in session. Tours are available for a fiver, or you can simply go get a drink from the cafe at the foot of the lightwell, and maybe buy some Supreme Court souvenirs while you're there. I resisted the mug, the notebook and the cuddly teddy bear, but I suspect victorious claimants may be more easily tempted.
When visiting an Open House property, the type of tour guide you get makes a big difference.
The resident: Worlds End Estate For vigour and insight, it helps to be guided round by someone who lives in the building you're visiting. In this case that's a set of buildings, the Worlds End estate, a large area of council housing by the river in Chelsea. That such a location was even considered in the 1960s is some evidence of how far upmarket this part of London has become, but then this was a mighty plan, replacing 750 Victorian terraced houses with something utterly completely different. Seven tower blocks were built, of varying height, with an asymmetric rippled exterior. These were linked by nine low-rise blocks to seal off two large internal courtyards, their overall shape a bit like a pair of spectacles viewed from above. The finished project resembles a redbrick castle, although the buildings are really reinforced concrete underneath, with bevelled slabs that help to hold the brick exterior in place. And that's just one of the unexpected facts divulged over an hour and a half's tour by local experts, not just someone reading facts off a sheet.
Worlds End used to be the site of some of London's plague pits, we were told. When Joe Strummer sang "London is burning and I live by the river", he was living here. That knocked-down cottage opposite Chelsea Reach Tower is Bryan Adams' new house, being rebuilt from the double-basement up. This is what you really want to know when traipsing round a maze of walkways, past some rather desirable pre-affordable flats You want a guide who remembers which of the many front doors is an original. You want people who know the 15th floor is the place to go for a fantastic view down the Thames, but only if you cross to the narrow raised recess beside the lift and step up. And you want a support team who know everyone needs to keep quiet fifteen storeys up for fear of upsetting residents in the neighbouring apartments. What came across strongly was how much those who live here enjoy and respect their home, and their enthusiasm was duly passed on to the dozens of us who turned up. Plus we got free tea and jaffa cakes in the community centre at the start of the tour - easily the warmest reception of the weekend. If a poke round out-of-the-ordinary social housing is your thing, be sure to tick the Worlds End estate on your Open House advance list for next year. [2 photos]
The employee: 20 TritonStreet
In the shadow of the Euston Tower, between Warren Street and Great Portland Street stations, is where you'll find Regents Place. It's described as a mixed use campus, for which read 13 acres of mostly offices, some of them relatively old but others much more recent. Everything's owned by developers British Land, and the fact you've probably never heard of the Regents Place hints at its unwanted anonymity. For Open House access was granted to the very modern office block at 10 Brock Street, but only to the ground floor, which was nothing over-exciting bar the chance to walk up to Facebook UK's reception desk and watch its employees ride some rather snazzy lifts. For proper interior access the OH programme offered up 20 Triton Street, another in the peculiarly modern tradition of naming giant buildings after the address of a small portion of their footprint. This is the home of Australian building company Lend Lease, swallowers of Bovis plc and architects of 2012's Athletes Village.
For the tour we were led round by the offices by one of the building's sustainability managers. Keen and lively he may have been, but the nature of his role placed a sustainability spin on everything we were shown. The sealants in the walls emitted minimal particulates, the elevators ran on eco-settings, even the floors were made from recycled railway carriages. He enthused about breakout spaces and touchdown booths, as certain people do, and saw not a top floor cafe but a networking space for maximising employee interaction. Having said that it was fascinating to compare this workplace with my own, ten years older, with few of the green benefits employees here currently enjoy. Oh for a roof garden with bee hotel, and tables to sit outside several floors up and look out over, well, Santander HQ and a digital artwork. Oh too for eight potted plants per member of staff, rather than the scattering of almost-cacti they've dished out in my office. Worth the tour for the reminder that how we work is just as much part of London's architecture as how we live. [6 photos]
The council worker: 5 Pancras Square What's in it for us, asked Camden Council, when the current round of development north of King's Cross rolled round. St Martin's get their art school, Google get their UK headquarters, but what can the burghers of north London get? And the answer is a 14-storey building incorporating a library, cafe and offices for council staff. Best of all there's a leisurecentre on the ground floor and a swimming pool in the basement which doubles up as an event space when appropriately covered. You're welcome. For this tour a member of council staff was deployed, complete with on-brand purple t-shirt, to lead a motley crew round the building. This was easily the most "normal" tour party I joined all day, comprising mostly ordinary members of the public rather than the usual culturally-skewed crowd Open House usually attracts. They were not disappointed.
She told us all about the building as we went, but her facts came entirely from a centrally-prepared set of notes. Thus on reaching the lift lobby we heard not about the architecture but instead a council-led competition for the artwork on the wall, while downstairs in the "Contact Camden" zone she focused only on the customer-facing services the new space provides. As we entered the library she enthused about £70K's worth of resource spending, whereas I was thinking "blimey that's not many books for an inner city library", an opinion echoed on the letters page of the free newspaper stacked up nearby. In the gym area she praised the council for buying disabled-friendly exercise machines, while pumped-up patrons tried to ignore the motley crew of tourists invading their privacy. And on entering the multi-storey office space she pointed out that all the stair treads on each different floor are different colours, as if this was the most fantastically original detail, so amazing that she mentioned it again, and then later one more time. I was hoping we'd go out onto the 11th floor roof terrace, but that's still sealed off two months after the building opened while contractors attempt to lay the tiles down properly, so a great view up the Eurostar tracks was visible only through glass. Ultimately this was a slightly too sanitised visit to a slightly too sanitised space, but good on Camden for grabbing part of King's Cross rebirth for themselves.
The architect: Hackney Marshes Centre
In Open House terms, meeting the architect is the jackpot. In this case we met two, both of whom had worked with Stanton Williams on the design of what's essentially a set of glorified changing rooms. And they need a lot. Hackney Marshes is the spiritual home of Sunday league football, where more amateur players than anywhere else in the world come together for a structured kickabout each weekend. Before 2012 they changed in a grotty shed, but this new building (not Games-related) provides a step change in facilities. The very very long horizontal structure consists of two wings, one behind gabion walls, the other with weathered steel cladding. Part of the latter slides back at night to protect the glass across the entrance, while the shutters across the upstairs windows are fully permeable to allow those within to watch the football. The Centre had to be wholly vandal-proof, that was the designer's brief, and every choice of materials was made with low-key security in mind. [2 photos]
"Shall we go and look at the changing rooms?" is not an offer you'd normally get as dozens of muddy football teams limp in from the pitches. We entered an empty one, obviously, to admire the integrated facilities and the dappled light shining through gaps in the rocky wall. The Centre runs a shift system to shuffle teams through the changing rooms, before and after matches, with every player's kitbag stored in an external locker while they're outside. Upstairs is a bar which opens out onto a roof terrace, and whose catering team served up the biggest tray of chips I've ever seen to tablesworth of beery post-match players. And upstairs too are two large function rooms, allowing the council to use the building for school groups and conferences midweek when all the football action goes quiet. Had I not been inside and given the full spiel I might have thought this a very mundane building, whereas now I understand its award-winning brilliance. And that's the maximum impact the right Open House guide can make - the difference between what a building is and why.
Some iconic buildings are remarkably easy to get inside, so long as you wait for the right moment. And so it is with the Balfron Tower in Poplar, the slightly smaller sister of the much better known Trellick Tower in Notting Hill. Both were designed by Ernő Goldfinger, Balfron first, with lessons learned here used to improve plans at loftier Trellick. Ernő even moved into a flat on the 24th floor for a few months, to better get a sense of what his community in the sky was really like. Since the 1960s it's been social housing, but maintaining a listed concrete building is expensive, so the time has come for major renovation work throughout the block. And that's meant moving the existing tenants out, a gradual process which has left several flats vacant in readiness for a full refurbishment starting maybe at Christmas, probably next year, nobody's really sure.
Into these empty apartments have parachuted dozens of local artists as part of a programme organised by the Bow Arts Trust. And these artists are keen for visitors to come and see what they've been up to, hence the Balfron Open Studios event was part of Open House weekend and anyone could get inside. Exciting stuff, not least because as many as two dozen flats were open, and because visitors could wander at will round the building on several different floors. The concrete! The views! The art! And oh, the decay. [20 Balfron photos]
The Balfron Tower's well known as a Brutalist masterpiece, hence attracts the attention of an arty trendy crowd as well as architects who know their stuff. But the building still remains home to many less well off tenants, while the surrounding area exists somewhere near the bottom of the UK poverty league. So on occasions like this I always find it somewhat awkward when Hoxton decamps to Poplar to inspect its societal quirks, and local residents are left wondering who the hell's invading and why. They've not read the Open House brochure nor checked the Balfron Season website, so the presence of special artistic opportunities on their doorstep generally passes them by.
So we shared the lift nicely on the way in. Ten of us at a time, so as not to overwhelm the place, with instructions to head for the top floor and then work our way back down via the stairs. I seem to have spent a lot of my Open House weekend in lifts, and Balfron's was the least glam of the lot. At least it didn't smell of that liquid you hope lifts never smell of, but the interior had more than the usual feel of metal box about it. Our ascent was a little slow and perhaps disconcertingly rattly as we climbed to the 24th floor and alighted.
Ernő kept the lift shaft entirely separate from the rest of the building, hence the unmistakablesilhouette of the tower. Here too are the rubbish chutes (not to be used after 9pm), the peeling stairwells and the drying rooms that were essential before the advent of the automatic washing machine. Slit windows are cut in the concrete shell, for that modernist castle vibe, and a buzzered security door grants access to the walkway beyond. The first few yards are suspended in thin air, in this case over 70 metres up, so this is not the place to live if you've no head for heights - you'd never get home.
Each walkway is tiled in its own colour - on the 24th floor that's royal blue - with front doors along one side and windows on the other. There are a lot of doors, which might suggest tiny flats but not so, some lead to stairs that lead either up or down to flats on other floors, with walkways only on floors that are multiples of three. While security grilles cover some of the doors others flap forlornly open, with months of post and junk mail splayed out on the floor, revealing that all is empty within. The door of Ernő's temporary flat at number 130 was firmly shut, but other numbered portals led to the art installations we were technically here to see.
Walking into each artist's flat, you never quite knew what you were going to get. In some the artwork was obvious and its creator bubbling over to talk, explaining why they'd draped the room with sheets or projected a film on the bathroom mirror. In others some right peculiar stuff assaulted the senses, from sculptures that looked like litter on the floor to soundscapes recorded from the neighbouring Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road. A few encounters were plain awkward, as the artist anticipated you'd want to engage deeply with their meaningful concept, while others had a lightness of touch and a flavour of fun.
I enjoyed the photographic exhibits, the industrial lullabies and the room filled with a giant sculptural X. I smiled at Kate Pelan's herd of folded shapes, and the room overrun with coloured glass mice. But I did wonder, after a while, if some of the artists in residence were simply using the Balfron Project as an excuse to have somewhere to stay for a few months. Shove some objets on the wall, annotate them with supposed meaning, and validate your bed for the night with art. Having said that, most of the flats had no electricity and had had all their kitchen fittings ripped out, so staying overnight looked somewhat impractical.
But sorry, Open Studios team, what I enjoyed most was the building you were exhibiting everything in. While you were trying to engage me with your artworks I was staring at the stairs, the walls, the entryphones, and wishing I could rush over to the balcony to take some photos. The really amazing Balfron artwork, used by many in the tower as inspiration, was the view across East London stretching out in all directions below. Oh to wake up to that panorama each day, or to watch a succession of blazing sunsets beyond the City. But then the sky was once the place where we hid the poor, and now it's all penthouses for the rich... as I suspect the revamped 24th floor will ultimately be. [9 panoramic photos]
If you want to take a look inside before refurbishment begins, before each of the hundred plus flats becomes a private space again, 2014's your only chance. The BalfronSeason runs until mid October and offers a range of experiences including exhibitions, workshops, dinners and debates. I think you've missed the Open Studios, sorry, but the National Trust are opening up Ernő Goldfinger's top floor flat to visitors between 1st and 12th October. It'll be fitted out in Sixties style, hence far more evocative than anything I saw, although the hour and a bit tour will set you back £12. Places are limited, but then it's not every day you get the opportunity to visit a community in the sky and a tower block people actually want to live in.
You may know it as the Nat West Tower, but it hasn't been that for years. It's now Tower 42, named after the number of floors within (and not as some posthumous tribute to Douglas Adams). The top level is open to the public all year, you don't have to wait until the third week in September. But to get in at any other time requires booking into the champagne bar and agreeing to a £10 minimum spend... which, when you've seen the price of the drinks, looks impossible to undershoot. And to get in for Open House requires timing and dexterity, because only a handful of tours are organised with only a handful of spaces available on each. I've failed annually for years, but this summer I managed to reload the appropriate booking page during the requisite 90 second window before all 140 places vanished to sight. Excellent, I thought, and about time too. Now all I need is for the weather to be good.
The weather was rubbish. It could have been worse - Saturday dawned with torrential downpours, which thankfully cleared away before tour number one. But low cloud cover and poor visibility plagued the capital all day, with only very occasional flashes of sunlight firing through the mist to illuminate a small portion of distant rooftops. Ah well, I thought, I'll make the most whatever, and the view was still stunningly lofty all the same. [15 murky photos]
When it was built in 1981 the Nat West Tower was the tallest building in London, nudging down the Post Office Tower by half a dozen metres. Its cantileverdesign was cutting edge, with three chevrons of offices suspended from a central core, and famously resembling the bank's logo when viewed from above. Unfortunately being a pioneering structure proved problematic, as the interior proved entirely unsuitable for cabling and the narrow office space precluded large trading floors. Nat West moved out in 1998, and the building's since been filled by a variety of tenant organisations, currently including almost no well known companies whatsoever.
Tower 42 lies between Old Broad Street and Broadgate, in a golden segment of the City where high rise development is permitted, untouched by sightlines from protected views. Its modern entrance is via a glazed atrium added onto the front of the building, rising to a mezzanine level with funky seating, almost like you're entering a hotel. Those who work here have separate lifts, but those destined for the champagne bar are guided down a narrow passage (decked out with furniture better suited to a tart's boudoir) to a small express lift. This has only two buttons - presumably so that even the tipsiest patron can operate it - and the journey to level 42 takes only 45 seconds. Your ears may pop, twice.
I was expecting something swankier. Vertigo 42 is a pricey venture, a bankers' destination of choice, but the bar is basically a narrow passage with chairs. That's because the 42nd floor consists mostly of core functionality shielded by floor to ceiling mirrors, leaving only a triangular-shaped walkway around the edge of the building. A concierge's desk sits by the entrance, at the far end is a hatch through which tapas can be served, and everything inbetween is for the punters. Perch on one of the swish coloured chairs, all of which of course face outwards, and rest your flute on the glass shelf. Some of the shelves are labelled with the name of the main thing to see in that direction, but the letters have peeled, adding to a sense that the bar would be nothing special were it not for the stunning view.
On a clearday, or twinkling afterdark, I bet it is a stunning view. On Saturday, however, only the Square Mile and its immediate surrounds could be picked out in magnificent detail. Buses trundled diminutively across London Bridge, taxis queued to pass traffic lights outside the Bank of England, and a tiny tube train appeared briefly in a cutting outside Liverpool Street station. The Thames beyond Tower Bridge faded into a monochrome ribbon, with One Canada Square a vague off-white smudge on the horizon. "Canary Wharf was really clear earlier," said the staff member on supervision duty, somewhat unhelpfully, "and the roof of the Velodrome was nicely lit up." Even looking beyond St Paul's proved problematic, made worse when something moister and blacker rolled in.
Despite the blanket of grey it was still simple to judge the tower's ranking in the local skyscraper league table simply by looking straight out of the window. Smaller than the Shard but taller than the Walkie Talkie, the latter with its upper garden deck clearly seen a few levels below. Smaller than the Heron Tower but taller than the Gherkin, the latter poking up its bulbous head above the machinery for cleaning Tower 42's windows. Quite convincingly smaller than the Cheesegrater, otherwise known as the Leadenhall Building, another very popular Open House venue this year. And taller than absolutely everything to the west across central London and Westminster, with even the Barbican's residential towers looking stumpy and stunted in comparison.
The tallest buildings in the City of London 1) Heron Tower (inc spire)(230m) 2) Cheesegrater (225m) 3) Tower 42 (183m) 4) Gherkin (180m) 5) Broadgate Tower (164m) 6) Walkie Talkie (160m)
Stuck to the serving hatch I found a leftover order for 15 bottles of champagne at £59.50 each, topped off with three bottles of wine for a total drinks bill three pounds short of a grand. Somebody had a good week, on the trading floor, I thought, or else that's small change from an annual bonus being blown to impress a group of friends. But I was more than pleased to have had the opportunity to come up here for nothing, plus the Open House bonus of being able to walk around for half an hour rather than being seated facing the same segment of London all evening. So I'll wish you good luck when the 90-second booking window for Tower 42 comes around next summer, and hope that the weather plays ball on the day of your ascent.
How time flies. A couple of years ago, when Canary Wharf's Crossrail station opened up for Open House, it was very much work in progress. A deep hole had been dug in the north dock and various layered cavities created, with temporary metal staircases descending into the earth to track level. There were no platforms, indeed there was as yet no tunnel because the giant drilling machines had yet to break through. Only a few fortunate souls gained admittance on that day, and hard hats and hi-vis were a requirement for any civilian entering. How things change.
For Open House 2014, anyone and everyone was invited. I almost didn't notice, because I'd assumed any Crossrail visit four years early was surely pre-book. But no, all you had to do was turn up on the right day, and even the queue wasn't that dreadful. This time no hard hats, just a waymarked trail around the station, and hundreds of people allowed inside at any one time. If I mention at this point that the whole thing's open again today, perhaps that'll encourage you to take a look inside. [10 photos]
The way in's unusual, via a long squat hexagonal bridge. This elevated tube looks like something out of Space 1999, and walking through it is somehow equally futuristic. It links across the dock from the North Colonnade, which is the side of Canary Wharf most people never go. The entrance isn't opposite anything useful like a road or a passage, and the DLR disgorges passengers a little further up the street. It all makes more sense if you thread through at shopping mall level, one rung down, because there's a direct connection past the shops which comes out immediately underneath the aforementioned bridge. Here the supports land in a rippling black water feature, an echo of the dock inlet that used to be here before Crossrail filled it in.
What you need to know about Canary Wharf railway station is that most of it has nothing to with trains. At ground level and above, beneath the long latticed wooden roof, the whole thing's about encouraging you not to travel anywhere. Somebody looked at central Docklands and decided what it really needed was more retail, this in addition to the two enormous shopping malls immediately adjacent, because bankers and financial services personnel have an inexhaustible amount of plastic to spend. Hence there'll be sandwich shops and luxury units around the edge of Station Island, where we got to walk yesterday, not that this was necessarily easy to imagine. Indeed heading upstairs into what looked like a large concrete void we were told this will one day be a restaurant. It'll be amazing what a good fit-out can do.
The first moment we Open Housers all stopped and waved our cameras was when we stepped out beneath thewooden canopy. It looks like a geodesic jigsaw, occasionally open to the sky but mostly not, which was helpful in the rain. The western end faces West India Quay station, so this is a premium location, hence I'd expect the restaurant to spill out onto a rear terrace with views across to the City. Much more impressive, from a public access point of view, is the Roof Garden approximately half way along the upper level. They're landscaping this at present, with broad pathways wiggling through what are currently earthen beds. A few palms are in, plus two lonely trees, but eventually there'll be 170, plus 1100 shrubs and 14000 plants, in a space that might even rival Joanna Lumley's bridge.
And down, and down, and down, and down. When you come in 2018 there'll be escalators, but for now they're boarded over and extra special care is required to descend. The first underground chamber running the entire length of the station is the ticket hall - a quaint term given that TfL will quite possibly have extinguished small cardboard permits to travel in four years' time. It's vast, and needs to be given the numbers of passengers expected to flow through. Surprisingly few supports are required to keep the roof up, but try not to think about this, nor the fact you're now below the waterline within the scooped out dock.
The final descent, down a none too capacious bank of escalators, leads to Level Minus Six. This is platform level, not that you can see the tracks at the moment because they're completely sealed off behind temporary walls. It's a high-ceilinged space, currently with lots of exposed masonry and metalwork, although how much of that will be hidden away later I'm not sure. Plenty of tools and machinery are also lying around, for now, because the fit-out down below is not yet complete. But it's still impressive progress given that two years ago this chamber was entirely platform-free, and now you can almost imagine where the roundels will go.
You don't normally have to queue to exit an Open House building, but when you're half a dozen floors down with no escalators the one functioning lift takes a bashing. Staff eventually worked out that most of us were fit enough to take the stairs, so led us up a considerable number of backsteps - not a route I expect you'll be taking if you arrive by train. And while that may be four years off, the upper levels of this station are due to be pressed into service as early as next year so that management can make as much profit as possible from their retail offering. So don't expect Canary Wharf Crossrail to be open for Open House again, expect to get inside as an everyday part of London life rather sooner than you might imagine.
Follow Exhibition Road right to the end, past the Natural History and Science Museums, and you'll reach Kensington Gore. At number 1, overlooking Hyde Park, is Lowther House, since 1913 the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society. The RGS is rather older than that, born out of gentlemen's dining clubs, for the advancement of geographical learning. Many a global expedition has been planned here, including the first successful assault on Everest, although modern patrons are more likely to surf to the Himalayas than actually visit. Anyone can enter the exhibition pavilion out front (currently home to an excellent display of People in London). But to walk in off the street and explore beyond requires booking an event, membership, or waiting for the third weekend in September. [3 photos]
Open House: The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
For vigour and insight, it helps to be guided round by someone who lives in the building you're visiting. In this case that's a set of buildings, the Worlds End estate, a large area of council housing by the river in Chelsea. That such a location was even considered in the 1960s is some evidence of how far upmarket this part of London has become, but then this was a mighty plan, replacing 750 Victorian terraced houses with something utterly completely different. Seven tower blocks were built, of varying height, with an asymmetric rippled exterior. These were linked by nine low-rise blocks to seal off two large internal courtyards, their overall shape a bit like a pair of spectacles viewed from above. The finished project resembles a redbrick castle, although the buildings are really reinforced concrete underneath, with bevelled slabs that help to hold the brick exterior in place. And that's just one of the unexpected facts divulged over an hour and a half's tour by local experts, not just someone reading facts off a sheet.
The employee: 20 Triton Street
What's in it for us, asked Camden Council, when the current round of development north of King's Cross rolled round. St Martin's get their art school, Google get their UK headquarters, but what can the burghers of north London get? And the answer is a 14-storey building incorporating a library, cafe and offices for council staff. Best of all there's a leisure centre on the ground floor and a swimming pool in the basement which doubles up as an event space when appropriately covered. You're welcome. For this tour a member of council staff was deployed, complete with on-brand purple t-shirt, to lead a motley crew round the building. This was easily the most "normal" tour party I joined all day, comprising mostly ordinary members of the public rather than the usual culturally-skewed crowd Open House usually attracts. They were not disappointed.
The architect: Hackney Marshes Centre
When it was built in 1981 the Nat West Tower was the tallest building in London, nudging down the Post Office Tower by half a dozen metres. Its cantilever design was cutting edge, with three chevrons of offices suspended from a central core, and famously resembling the bank's logo when viewed from above. Unfortunately being a pioneering structure proved problematic, as the interior proved entirely unsuitable for cabling and the narrow office space precluded large trading floors. Nat West moved out in 1998, and the building's since been filled by a variety of tenant organisations, currently including almost no well known companies whatsoever.
