Science & Engineering

The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.

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Broadcasting House

The BBC's first purpose-built home, shaped like a ship because the site was shaped like a prow.

Engineering landmarks

All Souls in front, Broadcasting House curving away behind.

Val Myer's building of 1932 was the first in the world designed from the inside out for broadcasting: studios stacked in a windowless brick tower at the core, offices wrapped round them as sound insulation, and the whole thing curved to fit a wedge of a site so that it reads as a liner steaming down Portland Place. Eric Gill carved Prospero and Ariel over the door and was still working on the scaffold when the first programmes went out beneath him. Nash's All Souls Langham Place stands directly in front of it, the one church left from his Regent Street.

Where
Portland Place, W1A 1AA
Nearest station
Oxford Circus · 5 min walk

Not open to the public; it can only be seen from the street.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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