Conference Room

This weekend is "Open House" weekend in London, when buildings of architectural merit or interest are opened to the public for viewing.  We always try to make use of this annual event as it is an opportunity to visit places (and parts of London) that we otherwise wouldn't see.  In past years we have visited office blocks, country houses, tidal mills and sewage works(!).

Today we visited a bathroom showroom - but one with a difference.  This is the Roca Gallery in London.  The building was designed by Zaha Hadid architects and it is apparently inspired by water.  The building is all curves and waves and droplets;  there is no flat wall or ceiling.  It rather reminded me of the Gaudi designed house we visited in Barcelona, which  similarly had no flat surfaces to walls and ceilings, although this gallery did not feature the brightly coloured ceramic tiles so typical of Gaudi.  The floor tiles, though, were individually shaped and laid to represent waves.

I found it an inspirational building, very enjoyable to visit and look around and well suited to showing off the equally inspirational bathroom designs offered by this company.

I have a selection of other pictures taken here in a Flickr album here.

After looking around this building, we strolled around nearby Chelsea Harbour, and then walked down the Thames path to Chelsea Bridge.  This isn't an area of London that I was particularly familiar with - and I hadn't realised how far the borough of Chelsea spread.

Open London continues tomorrow, and I would love to go and visit another building, but I think there are too many jobs to be done at home.