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London, England
But what else would you do for fun around here?
I have been to Open House London Weekend many times and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s just a great time to go to London, not just for Open House London Weekend but also for two other overlapping events. The first of those overlapping events is seeing the summer pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery.
I will always start at or near Paddington. Under normal circumstances, I’ll stay near there anyway since it’s so damn convenient for the Heathrow Express. And if it’s a Friday, I’ll even start at Paddington Basin to see the Rolling Bridge. Either way, I’ll head south and end up at Lancaster Gate and the Italian Gardens, where I’ll end up taking a picture of a fountain or a duck again. Then it’s an easy walk across the park (really Kensington Gardens) right to the always familiar red brick Serpentine Gallery building.
The Serpentine Gallery may be ever familiar, but what’s out in front of it is always ever changing. Every year they commission a different architect who comes up with a totally different design. In 2019, that architect was Junya Ishigami who designed a deceptively simple structure with a heavy, floating slate roof that was all about the materiality as it felt both oppressive and generous at times. I have been to a good amount of these temporary pavilions and each architect takes a completely different approach. Sometimes it’s a massive stand alone object, sometimes it’s a contrasting object that feels out of place until you realize it isn’t, sometimes it feels like an actual, real building and sometimes it feels (in the best way possible) like there’s nothing there at all.
So after walking from Paddington (where every talking bear there is always wearing a yellow rain hat for some reason), passing Lancaster Gate and the Italian Gardens (out of the way, duck) and spending way too much time at the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (yet rarely going inside to see the actual gallery for some reason), I’ll continue onward past the Albert Memorial (where I will take possibly the same exact picture I took last time), the Royal Albert Hall (where investigations into how many holes it would take to fill are apparently still ongoing) and down Exhibition Road to the always wonderful Victoria and Albert Museum. Which is where the (somewhat) foreshadowed third overlapping event starts to kick in.
In addition to Open House London Weekend and the Summer Pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery, the weekend also overlaps with the London Design Festival. This is an event scattered about the city and also somewhat in residence at the V&A. There, interventions are scattered like a scavenger hunt, with some of them being really quite beautiful and interesting and others just there. Somewhat in that latter category is this, “Bamboo Ring” by Kengo Kuma, centered in the museum courtyard and doing its best not to offend anyone or be noticed.
While some London Design Festival installations are really interesting, some of them (like, say, a sound installation) just don’t photograph all that well. Then there is this one, my favorite from 2019, “Sea Things” by Sam Jacob Studio. It uses mirrors and projection tricks to make a floating glass cube come to life., hovering over the heads of V&A visitors at the main entrance off Cromwell Road, which interestingly was not named after Thomas Cromwell (the guy from “Wolf Hall” whose head was eventually cut off by Henry VIII) or his distant relative Oliver Cromwell (who survived with his head on but was then dug up and his rotting corpse was beheaded) but rather Richard Cromwell, Oliver’s son who not only died with his head on but was able to keep it for all eternity. Or at least so far.
The V&A is a terrific museum and (like most big British museums, even the really big British Museum) is free and, as you would think, crowded. It’s also a great place to wait out a rainstorm. Moments after taking the “Bamboo Ring” picture, the entire courtyard cleared out because of the rain, where the museum and its collection of design (and/or applied and decorative arts) was waiting for them.
In addition to the scavenger hunt at the V&A, the London Design Festival usually includes an installation or two worth visiting scattered somewhere throughout the (lowercase) city. 2019 was no different, and that installation this year was an undulating bench installation called “Please Be Seated” designed by the unfortunately named Paul Cocksedge. Located in the surprisingly hard to find Finsbury Avenue Square at Broadgate, just past the northern reaches of the (uppercase) City (I will admit to getting lost trying to intuitively walk here from Moorgate without a map), it was populated by people and (unfortunately) infested by a not very good busker who refused to leave its center and her captive (although not captivated) audience.
In 2019, not only did Open House London overlap with the Summer Pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery and the London Design Festival, it also overlapped with Car Free Day which, as its name implies, is a day free of cars. These initiatives were all over the (lowercase) city but especially noticeable in the (uppercase) City, where the rain soaked streets from Leadenhall Market to Lloyds of London and all the way to Bank were taken back from all those cars, at least for a day.
