Discover how
public health crises
shaped London’s
most visionary
architecture
Join Open City for a socially-distanced walking tour exploring how public health challenges shaped London’s built environment through the ages with a special focus on water and sanitation
This insightful walking tour from Soho to Clerkenwell — led by writer and architectural designer Eleanor Marshall — chronicles the many public health crises throughout London’s history and reveals how bold reformers, architects and public bodies radically changed our urban environment in response.
The socially-distanced walk will explain how urban qualities we take for granted today — such as clean water, sanitation, fresh air and natural light — came to be recognised as crucial to good living and working conditions and radically influenced the architecture of the city. The tour will also consider how today's pandemic could reshape our city once again.
Providing a safe and fun way for enthusiastic urbanists to explore the city in our post-pandemic era, this special walking tour supported by Thames Water is part of a new series responding to the core themes of the Open House festival and wider Open City programme.
Using live audio and image sharing, participants will use their smart phones to discover the extraordinary stories of public health through the centuries. Starting in Golden Square, the site of a severe outbreak of cholera in 1854, the tour travels through Bloomsbury to Somers Town, an area of bold community health reform and finishes at Bevin Court, a controversial housing project that was part of a string of radical attempts to create modernist affordable housing in the former Borough of Finsbury.
This longer length tour will examine themes of public health, sanitary conditions and public housing by profiling pioneering buildings and people who have influenced much of modern architecture throughout Britain ever since.
Meet: 10am outside 29-30 Soho Square W1D 3QS. Duration 3 hours approx. 5 km approx. Tour ends at Bevin Court, near Angel Islington. Ticket cost £5, with support from Thames Water.
This is an in person tour led by your guide who is with you for the duration of the tour. Participants must bring a fully charged smart phone with internet connection, have downloaded Zoom in advance of the tour, bring headphones; and remember to stay at least two metres apart from each other where required. Zoom joining info will be sent out to all bookers 24 hours before the tour. Tickets are non refundable. Tours go ahead rain or shine… Get in touch with Adrianna at tours@open-city.org.uk with any queries.
Meet the tour guide…
Eleanor Marshall is a writer and architectural designer based in London. She has
worked in public realm and industrial design offices in North America and the UK,
and with city transport authorities in Moscow, London, Edinburgh and New York. Her
areas of practice are transport, health, urban design and post-war architecture. She
has previously led tours in Scotland and joined the Open City team in January 2021.