Open City

This is the second episode in our new Deconstructed miniseries, for which we’ve been given special access to London’s most ambitious cultural project: the transformation of the western part of Smithfield Market into a new home for London Museum, opening to the public on Saturday 28th November.

In this episode we were joined by Paul Williams, Principal Director and Co-Founder at Stanton Williams Architects, Alec Shaw, Director of New Museum Project & Estate at London Museum and Chris Bonner, Director of Regeneration and Redevelopment at the City of London Corporation.

We discussed the practicalities of transforming a Victorian market building into a museum, the incredible opportunities and challenges that come with structural engineering and the required environmental control needed for a 21st century museum. We talked about how the visitor experience will be shaped by the dramatic spaces of the market, and the role the building can play to tell London’s historical narratives.

This episode was supported by London Museum. You can find out more about visiting the museum on their website: https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/

Photograph © London Museum

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This is the first episode of a new Deconstructed miniseries, for which we’ve been given special access to London’s most ambitious cultural project: the transformation of the western part of Smithfield Market into a new home for London Museum, opening to the public on Saturday 28th November.

In this episode we were joined by Director of London Museum Sharon Ament, Director of Regeneration and Development for the City of London Corporation Chris Bonner, Partner at Julian Harrap Architects Lyall Thow, and Alec Shaw Director of New Museum Project & Estate at London Museum.

We discussed the Museum’s former home on London Wall, the origins of its move to Smithfield over a decade ago, the thousand-year history of Smithfield Market and the Victorian buildings designed by Sir Horace Jones in the 1880s which are the new home of the London Museum. We were shown the incredible surviving interior of the Lockhart Cocoa Rooms, hidden under veneer for many years, and considered how architectural conservation can shape the institution.

This episode was supported by London Museum. You can find out more about visiting the museum on their website: https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/

Photograph © London Museum

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Matthew Lloyd Roberts was joined by Graham Stirk, Senior Director at RSHP, to discuss Lloyd’s of London, the first building Stirk worked on when he joined the Richard Rogers Partnership as an architecture graduate in 1983.

The Lloyd’s Building is the Grade I-listed home of the oldest continuously operating insurance market in the world. It was designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership and is an icon of High-Tech architecture, a work of industrial craftsmanship covered in a dense network of pipes and ductwork and dramatic glass elevators. The building was designed from 1978, with construction completing in 1986, it was given listed status in 2011.

Graham Stirk is an architect and Senior Director at RSHP. Graham’s career with the practice began in January 1983, when he joined the Richard Rogers Partnership as an architecture graduate, where he worked on the services of the Lloyd’s Building. Since he joined the firm, which is now known as RSHP, Graham has worked on many of their high-profile projects, six of which have been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, and he led the design for the Leadenhall Building opposite Lloyd’s. At the moment he is heading up the design of an extension to the British Library and the redevelopment of two groups of listed gasholders into residential apartments in East London.

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In this episode, Matthew Lloyd Roberts is joined by Samira Ahmed, journalist, broadcaster, presenter and President of C20, to discuss the BBC Television Centre. Opened in 1960 in White City, the building became one of the most recognisable homes of British broadcasting, where countless television programmes were made and transmitted for over half a century. In this episode, we explored the history and architecture of the Television Centre, its place in Britain's cultural imagination, and what its transformation tells us about the changing role of the BBC and public broadcasting.

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The Open City Podcast is supported by Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture platform and produced in association with the Architects’ Journal, London Society, C20 Society and Save Britain's Heritage.

The Open City Podcast is recorded and produced at the Open City offices located in Bureau. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

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In this episode Matthew Lloyd Roberts was joined by Hannah Lund, Curator of Exhibitions and Displays at Leighton House and Sambourne House. Leighton House was built in Kensington by the Frederic Leighton, a painter, sculptor and president of the Royal Academy famed during the reign of Queen Victoria who vanished into relative obscurity during the 20th century. His house was an important place to create and exhibit his paintings, with a double height studio lit by north facing windows for the vast canvasses on which he worked.

Fascinated by the material culture of the Islamic world, he created his ‘Arab Hall’, tiling a domed extension to his house with West Asian ceramics gathered on a trip to Damascus. In this episode we discussed Leighton House, Victorian interest in Arabian culture, and the new curatorial interventions being made this year to mark the centenary of the house as a public museum run by the local authority, with new commissions from artists which query the meaning of such spaces their original context and to us today.

The podcast is produced in association with the Architects’ Journal, London Society, C20 Society and Save Britain's Heritage. It's recorded and produced at the Open City offices located in Bureau. Subscribe on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes and to further support, become an Open City Friend.

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In this episode Matthew Lloyd Roberts was joined by the historian Katrina Navickas to discuss the history of Grosvenor Square in Mayfair as a site of protest and policing. From the early twentieth century the square was home to the US Embassy, and it was the site of several protests against American foreign policy, most notably the Vietnam War in 1968. The policing of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign led to the first CCTV system in the UK being erected in the square. The Embassy building itself, designed by Eero Saarinen, became a potent symbol of American power in London, but more recently the Embassy has moved to a more secure location in Nine Elms.

Katrina Navickas is Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire. Her latest book is Contested Commons: a History of Protest and Public Space in England (Reaktion Books, 2025). She contributed the ‘Croydon’ chapter to Owen Hatherley’s The Alternative Guide to the London Boroughs (Open House London, 2020), and also the Croydon guide for the Open City Pocket London maps. She is also a founding member of the Rural Modernism network.

The podcast is produced in association with the Architects’ Journal, London Society, C20 Society and Save Britain's Heritage. It's recorded and produced at the Open City offices located in Bureau. Subscribe on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes and to further support, become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Matthew Lloyd Roberts is joined by Judy Ovens, one of the authors of the new book ‘Adventurous Vents: A Journey through the Ventilation Shafts of Britain’. They discussed the Culling Road Ventilation shaft on the edge of Southwark Park, designed for the Jubilee Line by Ian Ritchie Architects. They also discussed ventilation shafts designed by Eduardo Paolozzi in Pimlico, William Whitfield in Paternoster Square and the ‘Camberwell Submarine’.

Judy co-founded the architecture education charity Our Hut alongside Lucy Lavers and Suzanna Prizeman, with whom she co-wrote ‘Adventurous Vents’. She has a background in art and architecture, is a teacher and has recently become an accredited Lambeth tour guide.

The podcast is produced in association with the Architects’ Journal, London Society, C20 Society and Save Britain's Heritage. It's recorded and produced at the Open City offices located in Bureau. Subscribe on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes and to further support, become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.