London Open House offers a wonderful opportunity to explore buildings all over London - including in our Borough. The full listing of 27 buildings open to see in H&F over the weekend of 22-23 September is available here.  Why not also stroll or cycle round the nominations and winners of our own Environment Awards ?

And as the northern boundaries of the Borough become more important, on both dates there is a walk round part of the Old Oak & Park Royal Development Area led by art historian Magdalen Evans, details here

The walk could be combined with visits to other entries in the sometimes less-familiar north of the Borough include the former governor's house in the gates of HMP Wormwood Scrubs which houses the Koestler Trust, the UK's leading prison arts charity; and the Hythe Road Studios of ACAVA (the Association for the Advancement of Visual Arts). There are tours round the ex-BBC Television Centre Development at White City and the BBC’s previous administrative headquarters, now Westworks on Wood lane.

Members of the Committee visited this year's nominations on Sunday 20th May and shortlisted them. They are all shown on the nominations page with just a selection here. If you would like to comment on them, or make suggestions for winners, please use the comment form on the nominations page. 

Award winners will be announced at the AGM in the Bush Theatre on 5th July. 
Members, guests, and friends will be warmly welcomed.

Capability Brown wears a tiara for the Royal Wedding

Helios TV centre

TV Centre redevelopment

Planters, Lower Mall

Ark Conway Primary Academy

Riverside Studios – Crisp Road

White City Place

TV Centre redevelopment

2A Loftus Road

BT InLinkUK “Phone box”

Guerilla Gardening – tree pits in Galloway Road

Westfield extension / John Lewis

LAMDA

St Paul’s Girls School Pavilion

Westfield Phase 2 is nearing completion and will be opening soon including the John Lewis store. Westfield, Australian owned, are in the meantime selling out both White City and Stratford East to French giant Unibail-Rodamco for the small sum of £18.5billion and the sale should be completed in the Spring.

DIMCO (Wikipedia / Alexander Williams)

We were recently invited, together with members of the Historic Buildings Group, to look at proposals for the larger of the DIMCO buildings, the only Listed buildings remaining on site. This one is currently used by Transport for London for storing buses but come the completion of Phase 2 there will be a purpose built facility allowing the freeing up of the Listed shed. The current proposals, still at an early stage, are to convert the building into an entrainment/event venue. Although the the scheme involves inserting of a full mezzanine floor, none of the original fabric will be damaged so that all the interventions will be reversible. We liked the proposals in principle and our concerns were mainly centred on access and egress of up to 3000 people and the capacity of the adjoining streets and public transport system to cope with the potential surge of visitors.

Also in White City we were recently given a presentation of proposals for Centre House. On the site are the rather tired 1960’s buildings on the east side of Wood Lane opposite to old BBC tv centre. The buildings were all used as part of the BBC facility including prop storage, scene building and their engineering department. First sold to Helical Bar, then Imperial College, they will now transfer the site to St James who will develop approximately 520 units of housing, much of it for rent and specifically graduate accommodation for Imperial. It is another large scheme, mainly linear blocks of 9 storeys with a possible towers of 21 and 31 storeys. The architectural treatment has been well considered.

The landscape proposals are potentially excellent although there is limited private or public amenity space. Many of our concerns about scale, height and density and reduced open space have already been eclipsed by decisions already made on White City.

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