London Open House 2017

🇬🇧 It has been almost a year since I moved to London, but I’ve never heard a mention of this event. Glad my friend sent me a link.

Why is it cool?

It’s an annual event when various kind of places in London open doors to the public, keeping them usually closed throughout the year.

Places include: houses, places, government and infrastructure objects, etc. You can just browse here, no more words needed — openhouselondon.open-city.org.uk

Any surprises?

What surprised me is a number of people trying to get in some places, e.g. Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe) had a queue from 5 am Saturday!

Was there is a place you wanted to go and couldn’t?

Yeah, BT Tower, it’s very hard to get a chance to go up. Open House hosts ballot system for popular places, I’ve applied to some, including BT Tower but did not win a chance for 100% applications.

How many and what places did you visit?

🕐 I wasn’t doing thorough what-when-where planning, visited 4 places as a result. I’ll outline them next.

Portcullis House

1 Parliament St, Westminster, London SW1A 2JR.

Waiting time: 15 minutes.

Office building near Big Ben, member of parliament offices. There were “no photos” signs everywhere, though courtyard is stunning.

Hidden house

59 Kingsway Place, Sans Walk, EC1R 0LU.

Waiting time: 45 minutes.

Nice house built on top of, as an old lady at the entrance said, mental hospital cells because owners worked there and had a land. The simplicity of the interior and exterior. I definitely like this house, even though the location is a bit weird.

Mews House

30 Murray Mews, Camden, NW1 9RJ

Waiting time: 0 minutes.

This is my favorite place. House seems small from outside, but inside its three floors with a lot of space.

Weird things include bees 🐝hosting on the balcony, 👞 shoe holder fixed over the sleeping place.

The guy who lives here is an architect and implemented the house himself. He also has a nice cat 🐱.

Paxton Locher House

Waiting time: 0 minutes.

There was not waiting, but there was a lot of people. It was hard to go around this place, but it’s really nice anyway.

The kitchen area is in the center and does not have a roof. The roof can be folded and unfolded. The first picture has kitchen area at the bottom, then the first floor and you can see the folded roof.

The second picture shows a nice detail: wash-hand area with transparency and magazines underneath. So cool.

Result?

I will definitely visit Openhouse London 2018 If I ever have a chance. When you plan visits, you should account for queues at all places, especially popular ones!

Hope you enjoyed reading this post :)