The scaffolding is finally being removed from the LAMDA theatre fly tower. It’s no beauty. It reminds me of a giant water tank.
The theatre is not due to open until March 2017. The interior will be a lot more stylish than the exterior, I hope. Before that, next week, the Design Museum opens in the old Commonwealth Institute building on Kensington High Street. It looks as if good use has been made of the cavernous interior.
By Hammersmith Bridge, the Riverside Studios is being rebuilt on time. It is due to open in Spring 2018. This is what the architect hopes it will look like. The white buildings in the background beyond the bridge look ominous.
Cities are constantly in flux, sometimes changing for the better but often blighted by poor design and over-crowding. A problem that is hard to solve is overcrowding on pavements. In extreme cases, such as Oxford Street, the pavements have been widened but are still jammed. Perhaps as more people shop online and work from home it will become less of a scrum in London. Meanwhile negotiating London streets is an exercise in avoiding being bumped into by people on their ‘phones, watching out for scooters and cyclists and being blocked in by groups of tourists standing still and looking lost. I am lucky that a large part of my walking route into central London is through the parks.