The London control room is the digital hub for national radio, and the receiving centre for outside broadcasts.
Broadcast radio in Britain went from being the great novelty of 1922 to a national institution in less than a generation. By the time Broadcasting House opened at Portland Place in 1932, the BBC was already becoming established as a cornerstone of British life: worthy and responsible. While BBC announcers may have worn dinner jackets on air, there was nothing quaint about the technology or the architecture of Broadcasting House. It looked like nothing on earth and was packed with state-of-the art systems.
After one of the biggest operational and organizational upheavals in the BBC’s history, a massively redeveloped Broadcasting House was opened in 2012, and it was claimed to be the most advanced broadcast and production centre anywhere. It houses nearly all BBC television, news and radio and on-line broadcast services. At its heart is the same Art Deco building, now joined on its eastern side by further structures, modestly described as the ‘extension’. It still resembles an ocean liner steaming towards Regents Street: bow-shaped, with masts on the roof and circular ports on the upper level. The comparison was irresistible.
The London control room is the digital hub for national radio, and the receiving centre for outside broadcasts.
Architect George Val Myer had been set the task of exploiting an awkwardly shaped three-sided plot of land alongside All Souls Church at Portland Place. His main idea was a central tower housing the studios, insulated from the noise of the streets and excluding daylight. The tower was completely surrounded by outer layers of offices with windows. As well as having a tricky ground plan, Broadcasting House could not be made symmetrical in elevation, although a parapet wall above the fifth floor disguised this to some extent and it avoided looking misshapen when viewed from Regent Street. One of the most extraordinary features was the way that so many different rooms were disposed about its eight storeys and three basement levels. It is impossible to find an accurate tally of how many rooms were designed into the original Broadcasting House. The architect spoke of endless flexibility for sub-division of spaces. There were certainly originally twenty-two fixed studios, sandwiched between music libraries, a restaurant, a concert hall, lounges and rehearsal spaces. Broadcasting House sometimes resembled a small town and was always a maze. It had six lifts, waiting rooms, green rooms, a telephone exchange and a post office. The cleanly styled interior, particularly in the studios – which incorporated the latest soundproofing materials – won praise. The interior had mostly been schemed by young designers Raymond McGrath, Serge Chermayeff and Wells Coates, and the building was equipped with modern minimalist furniture, clocks and custom-designed signage. On opening, there was a level of criticism from the architectural pundits, but the only major problem was that the BBC quickly grew too large for the building. After seven years of gleaming whitely in its grimy London surroundings, Broadcasting House was camouflaged with dark green paint during the Second World War, when it gained scars and served steadily.
In the sound effects drama studio, old telephones, various doors and a range of household hardware remain as traditional instruments in the digital age.
The Woman’s Hour studio, with fabric-covered tables for quietness and perforated timber panels to tune the acoustics.
Sixty years later, Broadcasting House – despite post-war enlargement to the north end, upgrades, repairs and endless adaptations of rooms – was overcrowded and worn out. Many of the fine features of the interior were battered or covered; the hidden cable runs had become a tangled serpent’s nest; and there was a crack in the structure, and poor environmental control for most of the building. The Stronghold, an armoured concrete structure, had been erected alongside in 1942 after damage was sustained by Broadcasting House during the Blitz. It housed four new studios, and generated the myth that Broadcasting House possessed a secret platform on the Bakerloo line of the Tube, quite untrue, but the rumble of Underground trains could certainly be heard in the building. London Underground continued to plague Broadcasting House when the deeper-tunnelled Victoria line was opened underneath in 1969, and it was possible to hear these trains during studio broadcasts. That was not to be set right until Broadcasting House was completely rebuilt.
The oak-panelled semi-circular Council Chamber, restored to original condition, with a portrait above the fireplace of Lord Reith, the first Managing Director of the BBC; today, the BBC Trust meets here.
Meanwhile, Eric Gill’s statues, once controversial, settled into the street scene. Over the main entrance stand Prospero and Ariel. This sculpture needed to be trimmed by the artist when found to be too tall to fit the niche, and it carries a secret sketch of a girl on the back. On the Portland Place side is Ariel Hearing Celestial Music. Inside, behind the reception desk, stands The Sower.
It took a decade from 1992 to re-equip the old building and to build the two-phase extension: first the construction of a further building to the east, and then a curving wing to join old and new. The original slate roof was replaced by a glazed double-skinned system and the interior was largely stripped and rebuilt, especially the studios, and yet it is surprising how much of the first Broadcasting House remains. The concert hall, now the BBC Radio Theatre, now incorporates the highest audio-visual capabilities; the lifts, with limestone portals from Derbyshire stone, remain; the council chamber on the third floor was taken out and meticulously reconstructed; the staircases were restored, and the well-used steps left unmolested.
