What a Wednesday!

 

Today was another packed day full of work, meetings, site seeing, and events. I began my day by going to work, then had an awesome lunch with my boss at an Italian restaurant (gelato- check!). After lunch I headed to the Heritage of London Trust to meet with their director and get to understand more about their charity and what they do to preserve buildings, structures, landscapes, etc. They do pretty amazing work and have helped restore everything from a crumbling house to important figures tombstones. I am actually going back tomorrow after work to go on a tour they are giving of the Tower Bridge. After this I walked around a bit, went to see Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square again, and then stumbled into St. Martin-in-the-Fields. They were having a choral concert at 5pm, which I stuck around for. It was amazing, the beautiful voices combined with a beautiful church were breathtaking. You cold definitely get lost just listening to the music and staring off into the beauty of the building. After this, I then made my way to an architectural lecture which is part of the London Festival of Architecture this month (perfect timing). The lecture was held by ICOMOS-UK, which is an organization worldwide (ICOMOS) that aims to preserve sites and monuments; the city of Bath is deemed a World Heritage Site by ICOMOS. This lecture was really interesting and gave me some new perspective to design, which is always good. One of the projects they talked about was the usage of a castle in ruins to make a new home. The architects created a new home within the ruins of the old castle, which had been built in the 12th century. They focused on creating an open and inviting space that highlighted the ruggedness of the crumbling building, while still creating a distinctive stability with the new pieces. It is amazing work, and really makes you think about what one can do with crumbling structures. I found a BBC article and video if you are interested in learning more about the project (click here!).

 

Okay, now to the good stuff. Below are some pictures from my exciting and jam packed day! I will definitely have a bunch more tomorrow too, so stay tuned!

 

This is a cab stand, one of 9 that Heritage of London Trust has preserved. These were used by cab drivers to obtain free food and drink for free, beginning around the temperance movement to avoid cab drivers from getting drunk.

 

 

 Stay tuned for another round of photos tomorrow!