Open House

Today was the first day of Open House London, an architectural joy of a weekend when 600 London buildings open up free to the public. The year we lived in Toronto, we loved Open Doors Toronto, basically the same event with some 150 buildings taking part. The Toronto version was the first of its kind in North America, and it was easily my favourite Toronto outing of the year. I think a similar event in Vancouver would go a long way toward instilling civic pride in and awareness of the diverse architecture of the city--as it stands, I don't believe there is any free architectural event in Vancouver that allows Vancouverites to experience the buildings around them in the ways that Open House London and Open Doors Toronto do. Of course, the Toronto and London events aren't perfect--both are predictably crowded, and the queues at the most popular buildings (usually the ones that are inaccessible to the general public except during the weekend event and/ or the most iconic landmarks of either city) can be brutal. In London's case, a prebooking system for some of the most popular sites is a good way to avoid queuing, but (like everything else in London) buildings booked up incredibly quickly and I was shut out of many of the places that I wanted to see. Also, the fact that 600 buildings are up for grabs means that a lot of places go unseen. Still, part of the benefit of the event is that the free guidebook is a wonderful resource for finding out about the buildings, many of which are accessible on some basis throughout the rest of the year. Although a lot of people beat me to the online booking forms, I did manage to prebook us into two places, one today and one tomorrow, and we started both days at those locations and decided along the way where we'd go next--it was really the only sane way to approach Open House and I tried my best not to be disappointed that we only saw a handful of places over the weekend. London's often an exhausting city to get around, and this weekend was certainly no exception! Our first stop of the day was at the Barbican--a place that I've mentioned before as a mixed-use residential/ cultural concrete space that we always find extremely difficult to find our way around (so much so that I always add in extra travel time whenever we see anything there, just so we can find our way into the place). Our walking tour, Behind the scenes at the Barbican, ended up giving us access to parts of the complex that are normally only open to residents and our informative guide (who worked for the Barbican Housing Association for nine years) peppered the tour with insightful information that had us quite enamoured with the place by the end of the tour. That's not to say that the Barbican isn't without its problems; one section of the complex suffered from a leaky roof, and these plastic domes have no function other than to protect the leaky section from the elements. (You can just see the shadow of one roof peak under one of the domes.) Built in the 1980s, with a life-span of ten years, the domes were meant to be a temporary solution, and yet here they stand, echoing the domes at the tops of some of the original buildings, such as the one at the left of the photo. The huge tower blocks at the Barbican, of which there are three,
may look like distinctly unposh housing from the outside, but they (as with all the homes in the Barbican) are now extremely desirable, with the three-floor penthouse suites in each tower going for around £2 million. The smallest flats in the Barbican are ground-floor studio (i.e. one room plus a bathroom) suites; one recently sold for £200,000. Part of what makes the Barbican a great place to live is its City location, integrated arts complex, and access to greenspace. The ponds and gardens are lovely,

and the flowers that adorn most of the terraces really liven up the grey concrete.
I wouldn't have thought twice about this walkway,

but our guide pointed out the amazing number of kiwis hanging over our heads!
Part of the appeal of the tour is that it was "possibly" going to include a visit inside one of the flats, but although in previous years tours have been conducted inside empty flats that were up for sale, there wasn't a single flat for sale right now (I told you it was popular), so that wouldn't be part of our tour. I only had a minute to be disappointed before our guide mentioned that one of the mews would be open for viewing today, and if we were interested we could queue for that at the end of our tour. We went over to the mews, which we hadn't noticed before,
and waited for about ten minutes to have a peek inside this mews house, which was incredible inside, with great use of space, big windows facing the garden, and fantastic views from the rooftop patio: To add to the idyllic feel, grapes soaked up the patio sunshine:
From the Barbican, we went to the Lloyds building; although I had glimpsed it from afar, I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen it close up. Of course, as soon as we got to the building, it was easy to realise that this was my first real peek at this sci-f building, designed by Richard Rogers, (who also did the Pompidou Centre--another one-of-a-kind structure).
Unfortunately, the queue to get in was enormous, and so we settled for a walk around the building and a minute craning our necks at the exterior lifts
as well as a glance back at Norman Foster's Gherkin building (one of the ones that I really wanted to see inside, but all 500 prebooked spots went seemingly instantly), which was quite impressive up-close, before moving onto our next destination. We ended up hopping off our bus though, since traffic was at a complete standstill for the waves of Hell's Angels that clogged up the streets, ignoring traffic lights and creating a permanent line of motorbikes. Of course, they're the Hell's Angels, so no one was yelling or honking; everyone was just standing around wondering what was going on. (We found out when we got home that 3,000 bikers from across Europe were on their way across London to a funeral for one of their own, murdered last month on an English motorway.)
Our next stop was the home of Samuel Johnson:
While we waited in the short queue, I noticed that the streetlamp directly in front of the house appeared to be one of the few remaining gaslit lamps in London.
The house itself looks like your standard 18th-century townhouse,
but it was nice to be able to see inside the building
where Dr Johnson worked on his famous 1755 dictionary, which wasn't the first English dictionary, but definitely the best at the time and for many years to come.
One of the rooms contains a bookcase full of dictionaries, Johnson's and otherwise--the perfect room in which to play Scrabble?
(Not to detract from the printed word, but with our free access to the online Oxford English Dictionary, our living room is actually the perfect place to play Scrabble.) Here's Bob just outside the house, posing with (okay, actually scratching its head!) this odd statue of Dr Johnson's cat:
The tiny sculpture to the left of Hodge is an open oyster; apparently Dr Johnson fed Hodge oysters, which were cheap in the 18th century. We're not really sure why this statue exists, other than to provide a cat-scratching opportunity and another chance to engrave Samuel Johnson's famous London quotation, "Sir, when a man is tired of London he is tired of life: for there is in London all that life can afford." There weren't any queues at our next stop, the old Daily Express building,
and we walked right into its incredible Art Deco lobby, taken in by the lines and the light.



Our friend Jonathan was back in town, on his way back to Vancouver after working in Amsterdam this week, and we met him at the Barbican to give him keys to our flat so he could drop off his stuff, since he'd be staying with us for a few days. We met up again before our last building for the day, and so Jonathan joined us for a look at the Vintners' Hall, a 17th-century building with a swan motif running through most of the rooms and decorations, including this statue out front:
The interior was remarkable (no photos allowed, but you can have a peek here) and Bob asked a volunteer about the significance of all the swans. I found Bob and Jonathan smiling and nodding politely as the woman explained every detail of the connection (much more than is on the website), and I joined in the smiling and nodding until she finished. "You had to ask . . ." Jonathan scolded Bob on our way out. From Vintners' Hall, it was a short walk to Southwark Bridge, which is usually filled with cars--but not today!
As part of the Mayor's Thames Festival this weekend, Southwark Bridge was temporarily closed to traffic and reborn as a pedestrian bridge, complete with quite a few different environments for eating and drinking, including cosy living rooms,
woodland forests,
and sandy beaches.
Bob likes budgies (when he was young, he had one who used to pick out toast crumbs from between Bob's teeth--which makes me say "Ewwww" every time Bob reminds me; "You kiss that mouth now," Bob added today--"Double ewwww!") and I had heard that Budgieman was going to be performing on the bridge, but we just missed his act, so we moved along.
Jonathan needed some lunch and Bob suggested the Borough Market sandwich spot which only opens on Saturdays. I think Jonathan approved:
"I can't believe I'm standing here watching you eat that and I'm not eating one," Bob said, clearly stressed out over this simply-not-right situation, "But I'm just not hungry enough!" he lamented, in the tone of someone who has just had to admit a huge personal fault.