Open House London 2008: Part 1

I didn't really plan for Open House properly this year (although I did much better than last year), which as just as well, because the transport was so screwy last weekend that I would never have made it in time to half the things I'd planned to see. Instead, I picked a list of things that were only open on Saturday and a list of things that were only open on Sunday, and planned around that. Unfortunately, my camera wasn't up to the low-light conditions of most of the places I visited, and all of my photos came out horribly noisy, overexposing the white areas and underexposing everything else, which means that I don't have any decent photos to show of most of the places I visited (I mean, compositionally they're mostly good, but the image quality is awful, which is bloody annoying).

My first stop was St. Martin's Gospel Oak, which I chose because I thought I'd start local — I can also see its steeple from my kitchen window — and because I was intrigued by its description as "the craziest Victorian church in London." I was expecting it to have a colourful interior or really way out architectural features, but it doesn't. In fact, it's pretty dull from the outside and, although it does have a few pretty mosaics, it's not very colourful inside. It does have a nice vaulted ceiling, which is quite unusual in style, but is not particularly "crazy" so I was a bit disappointed. There was an old man with his old dog, which was quite nice to see, because most churches don't seem that dog-friendly.

Second stop was the Alexandra & Ainsworth Estate, off Abbey Road, a concrete housing estate built in the late seventies. It's a famous estate, and usually represented in brutalist style, but that's not really what it's like, or what the architect, Neave Brown intended. It's a surprisingly pretty place, despite the grey concrete, with a Mediterranean atmosphere that was enhanced by the gorgeous blue skies and warm sunshine of that particular day.

Every flat has its own balcony, built to a generous size to make it an extra room, and most of the balconies were dripping with green leaves and bright flowers, making a potentially grim and grey place very pleasant (of course, it's probably not quite so nice on a cold grey winter's day when all the plants have shed their leaves and flowers). On top of that, there are communal areas to sit outdoors, and I passed one family having a picnic in the sun. The original design features of the flats were quite nifty, too, with sliding walls to enlarge spaces, and in-wall heating rather than radiators. It's no wonder that flats there are highly sought-after these days.

And then onto Mayfair and the Royal Institution, open to the public for the first time since its refurbishment. Its location, along with the creamy-white porticoes and the Union Jack flying over the door, suggest that its interior will be staid and conservative, but it's bursting with bright colour inside. There's a pretty staircase which greets you as you enter, with a bright blue ceiling and a chandelier and a wrought iron bannister, and rooms off to the side with loudly checkered floors and purple walls. Next to the toilets there's an enormous reproduction of the £20 note with Michael Faraday's face on it, which was a bit unexpected when I turned the corner.

Upstairs there are library rooms and book-lined corridors with strange artefacts on display, and there's a museum in the basement with even stranger artefacts to look at (which I intend to go back to when I have more time). And then there's the lecture theatre, with its steep banks of purple seats and pretty art deco lights. Not to mention a small cafe, and a rather fabulous looking restaurant and bar, which straddles the fine line between classy tastefulness and outright tackiness with some aplomb. I can't wait to go there for cocktails.