I’ve been to Open House a few times. Every year, the Open House Festival opens up London’s architecture, special sites, and neighbourhoods. Some of the places are not normally accessible to the public. You get to see people’s homes, offices, and other interesting buildings. Some places you must book but others you can just drop in. I’m not normally organised enough to book places. So, I miss out on the extremely popular places, which are booked weeks ahead.
I vaguely remember that the festival lasted only a weekend in past years. Now it’s nine days, covering two weekends. I spread out my visits this year over three days.
Argentine ambassador’s residence
There was more of a chance seeing places mid-week. The ambassador’s residence was not that busy. The staff were friendly and provided information about the house, located in Belgravia.
There were two floors open. The interior was plush, as you’d expect. The second floor had an art exhibition.
Royal College of Nursing
Mid-way to my next destination was the Royal College of Nursing. Alas, most of the building was shut to visitors. However, there was a resident artist painting placards for people. He had interviewed nurses and created various signs for various purposes, such as marches and strikes.
Pushkin House
I remember enjoying reading Russian literature years ago but had not read any lately. So, I went to Pushkin House looking for inspiration in the book fair organised for the festival. The house, built over two hundred years ago, is now a centre for all things Russian, especially the Soviet era.
Some other visitors were browsing the books, and we started talking. I mentioned the book I was reading, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. This is a wonderful book about three generations of an Indian family living in Kerala. It’s both life-affirming and sad in equal measure. It’s a long book but I did not want it to end!
I also got talking to the person running the bookshop. She had studied Russian and was a Russophile. I asked her what Russian book she’d recommend. She pointed to Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, which she’d read twice. I read the blurb. A critic said it was the best book written since the second world war! It was another book that tracked multiple generations of a family. I liked what I read and I bought it!
Former headquarters of Transport for London
My final visit of the day was 55 Broadway, the former headquarters of Transport of London. I passed a gleaming Westminster Abbey on the way.
Again, there was not much to see but the art-deco building, which houses St. James’s Park tube station, is impressive. Built from Portland stone, it uses a steel frame for support.
I learnt in Chicago that brick buildings have a maximum height. Beyond a certain height, the lower bricks cannot support the upper building. The tallest load-bearing brick building is the Monadnock Building in Chicago. It was built in 1891 and is an early example of a skyscraper. It has sixteen floors. The introduction of concrete and steel allowed taller buildings to be constructed. The Monadnock Building, as a whole, was made possible by the internal steel structure.
In the former Transport of London building, the “headway recording clocks” were fascinating. These are train interval indicators, which were “once used to measure train performance against the timetables. When a train passed over certain sections of a track, it would trip a mechanism within this display that would mark the disc of paper. Managers could then check the markings to monitor actual performance against timetables. It was the job of the staff at St. James’s Park station to change these discs every day.”
RIBA
On Saturday, Helene, some friends and I went on a guided tour of the Royal Institute of British Archtects’ headquarters. We learnt a lot about the history of the building. There are many architectural features we’d have missed if the guide hadn’t pointed them out. He was one of the best guides I’ve been with. He was passionate and knowledgeable about architecture. I’m going to look out for more tours on his website.
The headquarters, built in the 1930s, took about 18 months to construct and cost about £120,000 at the time. Like the former Transport of London building, it’s made of Portland stone and steel. Some of the window columns in one of the halls depict the trades of the people who worked on the building. Heavy doors are hinged to allow them to be easily opened. The library has a ship-like feel from above. Immovable-looking large partitions can magically rise to open up spaces. The first and second floors use natural light to brighten up the building.
Much of what we saw can be seen anytime. The library, with the finest architecture collection in the world, is open to everyone most days of the week.
It seems very appropriate that the home of architects should be modern, stylish, and artistically interesting in so many ways.
Linnean Society of London
Before going home, I went to the Royal Astronomical Society for a tour I’d booked. However, because of a mix-up on the Open House website, the organisers were accepting people only on a first-come basis.
So I popped into the Linnean Society next door. It’s the home of the natural history collections of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linneas. He’s the father of modern taxonomy and it’s thanks to him that organisms are named what they are.
Apart from Linneas’s works, there was an original painting of Charles Darwin. Next to it was a posthumous portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace. They both independently discovered the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Brick Sixty Studio
On Sunday, Helene and I started at the Brick Sixty Studio. We were expecting to learn about the history of the humble London brick! Instead, it was a shop that used the London brick as inspiration for assorted designs. These included (extremely expensive) soap and ornaments!
On the way to the Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Centre, we saw a sign for the Camley Street Natural Park. We’d seen this on a hidden London walk but it was closed. It had re-opened. So we popped in for coffee and a walk around the secluded and peaceful grounds.
After some brief meditation at the Buddhist Centre, we headed for our final destination of this year’s Open House Festival.
The Isokon
When we got to The Isokon, there was a huge queue for the tour of three flats. Some people had queued for over two hours! We were told that no more people were being allowed in. So we visited the Isokon Gallery, which occupied the space of the demolished garages. The gallery tells the story of the
Isokon building, the pioneering modern apartment block opened in 1934 as a progressive experiment in new ways of urban living.
Commissioned by champions of modern design Jack and Molly Pritchard and designed by Wells Coates, the Isokon was home to Bauhaus émigrés, artists, authors, architects and even Soviet spies.
The Isokon Company pioneered bent plywood furniture, and classic designs by Marcel Breuer.
The building became famous as a centre for intellectual life in north London. Its restaurant and bar, called the Isobar, was a popular place to congregate.
The Isokon building was eventually sold to Camden Council in 1972. Despite being a Grade II listed building, it was poorly maintained and began to deteriorate. The Notting Hill Housing Group bought it and, after four years of major restoration work, re-opened it in 2004. It now “contains 36 flats, most of which are owned on shared equity basis by key workers such as nurses and teachers”.
When we were in Berlin, we could go only to a temporary Bauhaus exhibition. I remained curious about the movement that combined form and function. So I was happy to buy a biography of the founder of Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, who had lived in the Isokon.
After exiting the gallery, I noticed that the queue to see the flats had gone down. It was nearing closing time. I got talking to one of the volunteers. We discussed social housing. After a while she let us join the last group tour of the day!
First, we saw a tiny studio flat, which the friendly owner described as his “man cave”. He normally lived in Mill Hill East.
Since it was getting late, the tour skipped the one-bedroom flat. Instead, we went straight to the top of the building to see one of the penthouse flats. The owner had furnished the flat in the style of the building’s heyday.
