If asked to name a Sir Christopher Wren building - most of us would get as far as St Paul’s cathedral and then be stumped. It’s astounding quite how prolific Wren was - more than 89 buildings are attributed to him, and when you consider the scale of some of these buildings, that’s no mean feat. St Paul’s took more than 30 years to complete, and by the end of the construction Wren was 76 and being hoisted up in a basket to inspect the building works. (more…)
Bankside Power Station was built by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott - his name may not be familiar, but his other major London building will be - Battersea Power Station. He also designed the much-loved Red Telephone boxes (you can see four of these in a virtual tour here), the Salvation Army’s William Booth Memorial Training College in Camberwell, and Waterloo Bridge. (more…)
In 1982, Queen Elizabeth II woke up to find an unemployed labourer with a bloodied hand and a broken glass ashtray sitting on her bed.
Michael Fagan was (according to his mother) inordinately fond of the Queen. Perhaps this is why he allegedly chose her bedroom as the place he would commit suicide, but apparently then decided that it wasn’t “a nice thing to do” once he arrived. It wasn’t his first break-in to Buckingham Palace - a month previously, (more…)
For 163 years, the height of the Nelson’s Column was always quoted as 56 metres tall (185 foot). However, in 2006, measurements were taken which revealed that the column is a fair bit shorter at only 50 metres (169′5″).
When Wren built St Paul’s Cathedral, he created the huge dome as a religious icon, something to inspire awe in the congregation below. What he may have failed to foresee is that the height of the whispering gallery (a drop of 100 foot) made it feasible for people to commit suicide there. (more…)
Trafalgar Square is world-renowned, in a large part for its pigeons, and people came from all over the world to feed them, and be photographed covered in these feathered Londoners. An idyllic scene, but one that the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone was determined to eradicate. (more…)
The City of London is full of strange street names. St Mary Axe has now given its name to one of London’s most famous buildings, ‘the Gherkin’, but how did the street and the building become so named? (more…)
We’ve got London Revolution virtual tours on a few of these, but it seems that there’s still some of London’s ‘Ugliest Buildings’ which we’ve not yet photographed. (more…)
Today we have uploaded two new virtual tours of Fitzroy Square, London. The tours are in the square itself, but rising high above the elegant Georgian buildings of Fitzrovia is the BT Tower. I’ve been doing a little research on this classic London landmark, and so thought a blog post was in order! (more…)
Louis Khan, architect in 1950s America believed that ‘design habits leading to the concealment of structure have no place’. Khan was an instrumental influence in the ‘High Tech’ (hi tech) style of architecture, where buildings appear inside out.
In 1978, Richard Rogers was awarded the project of designing a new headquarters for Lloyds of London. (more…)
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