News & Events

Brockwell once again will open its doors for the London wide open house event.

Tours will take place between 10.00-17.00 on a first come first serve basis. The last tour will be 16.00.

For the past 18 years, every September, England's capital city has opened up its more tightly locked doors to the public for the event called Open House London. What started with 25 private buildings making themselves available for one weekend only to ordinary folk has now expanded to 750. Among them are 17th-century mansions, 21st-century schools, offices, architects' studios, even a couple of hospitals and hotels – plus the unbelievably sumptuous residence of the Argentine ambassador.
Every year, the Lloyd's of London building – the extraordinary office building for the shipping brokers designed by Richard Rogers in 1986, and still as exciting today with its external lifts and brightly coloured pipework – has queues round the block. This year, as a one-off, visitors will be welcome at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington. It's the very last chance to see inside this impressive piece of 1960s architecture (English Heritage reckons it's second only to the Royal Festival Hall in importance) before minimalist John Pawson gets his hands on it and turns it into the new Design Museum, due to open in 2013.
But what we really want to see, of course, is inside those incredible architect-designed houses that are often stealthily slipped into tiny vacant plots on London's streets. Or the interiors of Victorian homes that may look conventional from without but have been spectacularly revised with glass and concrete within. This year, there are some exceptional examples, from a new-build in Borough to a 1970s duplex in north London that's been turned upside down.