Society summary

Society shows off its HQ building on 25th anniversary of its occupation

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s headquarters building — first occupied 25 years ago this month — is again to be shown off to the public as part of London Open House weekend, the annual celebration of the capital’s architecture which this year takes place on 22 and 23 September.

The Society’s six-storey building, with its distinctive sleek brown aluminium cladding, will be open on the afternoon of Sunday 23 September. Visitors will be escorted round the building’s assembly hall, Council chamber, committee rooms and Council dining room. Apart from replacement furniture in the Council dining room, the 1976 interior and furnishings in these rooms remain intact. Visitors will also be able to inspect displays from the Society’s museum collection and take in the view from the fifth floor roof terrace.

Guided tours will run every half hour between 1 and 5pm (last tour at 4.30pm). For security reasons, each tour will be limited to 25 people. Museum staff will lead the tours, with volunteer stewards helping manage the event and shepherd groups round the building. A small exhibition on the building and its design will be on show in the headquarters reception area. Interested members are asked to contact the museum office (tel 020 7572 2210) for details.

Although the building’s official opening did not take place until 22 February 1977, the Society moved into its new headquarters during the weekend of 4 and 5 September 1976, ending a 135-year occupancy of its first home at 17 Bloomsbury Square. The new building, on the corner of Lambeth Road and Lambeth High Street, was designed by David Hodges of the Louis de Soissons Partnership.

The architect had to cope with the task of reconciling the Society’s accommodation requirements with the constraints of a site of less than ideal size. The plot purchased by the Society was under half an acre, and the area available for building was even less than this because of the need to allow for a possible future widening of Lambeth Road. A further complication was a planning authority ruling that vehicle access should be restricted to the relatively short frontage in Lambeth High Street rather than the main frontage on the busy Lambeth Road. An additional constraint, which was imposed by the then Greater London Council after the Society had acquired the site, was a strict limit on the height of any building within the immediate vicinity of Lambeth Palace.

The Society has taken part in London Open House weekend each year since 1998. The event offers the public the chance to see behind the doors of Government, business and private premises that are usually closed to the public or open only on payment of an admission fee. Other professional bodies opening their doors to the public this year include the British Medical Association and several of the medical royal colleges. Several London hospitals of architectural interest are also taking part. They range from London’s oldest hospital, St Barthomolew’s, which is showing off its mid-18th century Great Hall, to London’s newest teaching hospital, the Chelsea and Westminster, which opened in 1993. Further information about the weekend is available from London Open House, PO Box 25361, London NW5 1GY (e-mail send@londonopenhouse.org; website www.londonopenhouse.org.)

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