Broadcasting House

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For other uses, see Broadcasting House (disambiguation).

Broadcasting House. The area currently in redevelopment is to the right of the building.

Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC in London. Situated in Portland Place, it is normally home to Radio 2, 3, 4, 6 Music and BBC 7. Architect G Val Myer designed the building in collaboration with the BBC's civil engineer, M T Tudsbery. The interiors are the work of the Australian Irish architect Raymond McGrath. He set up and directed a team which included Serge Chermayeff and Wells Coates and designed the vaudeville studio, the associated green and dressing rooms, and the dance and chamber music studios in a flowing Art Deco style. It was later said of his efforts that ‘the designs for the BBC gave the first real fillip to industrial design in England. Broadcasting House was officially opened on May 14, 1932 and is now grade II* listed.

At the front of the building are statues of Prospero and Ariel (from Shakespeare's The Tempest) by Eric Gill. Their choice was fitting since Prospero was a magician, and Ariel, a spirit of the air, in which radio waves travel. There was reportedly some controversy over some features of the statues when first built and they were said to have been subsequently modified. They were reported to have been sculpted by Gill as God and Man, rather than simply Prospero and Ariel, and that there is a small carved picture of a beautiful girl on the back part of Prospero's statue. Other sources claim that Gill intended them as God the Father and Son, as supported by the fact that the statue of Ariel has stigmata. Additional carvings of Ariel can be found on the building's exterior in many bas-reliefs ^[1].

Broadcasting House was the home of the BBC Radio Theatre, where music and speech programmes (typically comedy for BBC Radio 4) were recorded in front of a studio audience.

[edit] Renovation project

The new Egton Wing of Broadcasting House (right).

Broadcasting House is currently undergoing a major renovation. Scheduled for completion in 2009/2010, it is currently expected to be finished in 2011. As part of a major reorganisation of BBC property, Broadcasting House is to become home to BBC News (both television and radio), which will relocate from the News Centre at Television Centre; national radio; and the BBC World Service, which will move from Bush House.

The major part of this plan involved the demolition of the two post-war extensions to the building in 2005 and the construction of a new building, to be equal in "architectural creativity", beside the existing structure. The design of the new extension was carried out by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard. The extension, named the Egton Wing, was completed in 2005 and bears similarities to the shape of the original Broadcasting House building. A sculpture commissioned by the BBC has been added to the roof of the building in memory of the journalists who have died whilst working 'in the field'.

The original architects have since been sacked and replaced by the BBC for not agreeing to cost related revisions (Sir Richard MacCormac was unwilling to sacrifice the quality of his design). While the rebuilding process is being undertaken many of the BBC Radio networks have been relocated to other buildings in the vicinity of Portland Place.

BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music have moved their studios from Broadcasting House to newly built studios in the adjacent Western House. ^[2]

Queen Elizabeth II visited Broadcasting House on 20 April 2006 as part of her Birthday celebrations and to officially open the redeveloped Broadcasting House.

The remaining ongoing work now involves refurbishment of the Radio Theatre and other various radio studios located around the existing building, while the new studio space in the new sections will be stocked with state of the art broadcasting equipment.

[edit] Notes & references

^ See [1] and [2]. This was also discussed on the BBC Radio 4 programme, The Archive Hour, 18 March 2006, entitled "The Home of Radio". [3]
^ See BBC Radio 2 website article [4]