THE FIRE & THE FUTURE
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On this walk we’ll explore three connected areas which have changed dramatically and rapidly.
(pictured: the Grenfell Tower (L) and John Lewis Westfield White City, viewed from Wood Lane Station)
In the first, 'Notting Dale', social housing overcame extreme poverty in the overcrowded Victorian 'Piggeries and Potteries'. Now, the brick-clad 1969 20-story blocks of the Silchester Estate are themselves being completely refurbished, with new windows, lifts, dry risers, fire-resisting doors and screens…and sprinklers.
I will summarise the Grenfell Fire Inquiry Report after we--respectfully--walk around the adjacent 1972-81 Lancaster West Estate, and you will see that the three low-rise blocks extending south from the Tower, with landscaped gardens between them, are also being upgraded with an 'energy-efficient retrofit', with triple-glazed windows, non-combustible insulation, new heating and ventilation, and new kitchens, bathrooms and WC's.
The area developed in the low-lying valley of Counter's Creek, and was completely hemmed in to the west by the West London Railway and later the M41 Motorway.
Its desperate inheritance, to which is now added the 2017 tragedy, casts a long shadow. Now, however, one can climb the steps at Hunt's Close and stand facing the largest 'retail and entertainment destination' in Europe, ‘Westfield Shepherd’s Bush’ and its recent ‘White City’ extension.
Until 2005 all this, from Shepherd’s Bush Green to Westway, was successively brickfields, plant hire, scrap metal and demolition contractors' yards, a Central Line depot, an M & S warehouse, and was even, briefly, considered as the terminus of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
Now, supermarkets, the 'High Street', and 300 other stores, including luxury Mulberry, Tiffany, and Louis Vuitton, all under one roof. And what a roof! Intended to resemble the effect of ‘a pebble dropped in a pool of water’, it was engineered by virtuoso German designers Knippers Helbig.
Before the White City extension--complete with that ribbon roof, edge lighting and curved balustrades--there was direct access from Notting Dale to Marks & Spencer's Food Hall, and onward.
Now we must plunge through the underground car park--seeing Harry Measures’ ‘Dimco’ Generating Station on the way--to reach the new four-floor John Lewis, more open, more minimal and with more branded ‘shop-in-shops’ than any previous Department store. JL say it is ‘for the 21st Century’ and has the lowest proportion of stock rooms of any of its department stores!
In, and up, to the rooftop car park from which we can see the rest of the project: the irrepressible Berkeley Homes' 1465-home 'White City Living', including Patel Taylor’s extraordinary 35-storey Cassini Tower, 'the lynch pin of the wider regeneration area', 'fluid, playful, a building with no back', with 180-degree-view curved balconies.
Finally, across Wood Lane is the site of the BBC Television Centre designed in 1960 by respected practice Norman + Dawbarn, with structural engineer Marmaduke Tudsbery, with its distinctive buildings and ‘question mark’ plan diagram, original listed features, including the circular, mosaic-lined, Helios Courtyard, and the original Stage Door, now the apartment entrance, with its refurbished John Piper mural.
Its central ring* was the famous backdrop to many promos and programmes.
It was the headquarters of BBC television between until 2013, having opened in stages until as recently as 1997 (the BBC News Centre) only to be put on the market in 2011 to cut costs.
Repurposed by AHMM, as housing, offices, a cinema and hotels, with 3 studios retained for the BBC's use, it reopened in 2017 as ‘Television Centre’.
Hope you can come!
To finish, two stops on an eastbound Hammersmith and City Line train to Ladbroke Grove Station.
Here, at the other end of Lancaster Road, our table awaits in what was once the ‘Kensington Park Hotel’:
THE FIRE & THE FUTURE