LSE Estates Division were inundated with requests for guided tours of the Stirling Prize nominated Saw Swee Hock Student Centre on Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st September 2014, when it was showcased as part of Open House London.
Each year Open House London gives hundreds of thousands of people the chance to explore their City’s architecture and urban design for free. For more information visit the Open House| website.
Guided tours, each led by a member of the project team, ran every 15 minutes from 1pm to 5pm on both days. In total 386 people were given an insight into how the building was planned, designed and built, supported by an Archifacts sheet| (PDF). Each tour guide gave a different perspective, dependent upon the role they played in the project:
Willie Carey gave the Architects' perspective. We heard from the construction team Graham Potts, Dan Richards and Steven Nott and LSE client representatives were Julian Robinson, Director of Estates together with Ken Kinsella, Emma Lovegrove and Nick Garwolinski from the Capital Development team.
Visitor feedback was extremely positive, a few of the comments received......
Fantastic building and excellent informative tour. The LSE tours are consistently the best Open House experiences. Thanks!
Good tour from a very well informed guide of an amazing building - should win Stirling!
Very compelling. Good balance of design, technical and sustainability issues explained.