redevelopment

If you wanted to visit London’s Soho district and the shopping thoroughfare of Oxford Street, you would stop off at Tottenham Court Road station. I’ve used it countless times. In recent years, the station and its neighbourhood have undergone radical change to prepare for the Crossrail scheme, designed to improve the city’s hard-pressed transport system.

The Central and Northern Line Tube station is now spruced up and more spacious than before. It has a modern and industrial feel, with bold, simple graphic designs. The entrance and exits are light, stark temples of glass, while you’ll find the newest Tube signs here.

But change comes at a price – the exits have been repositioned, and emerging from one I was seriously disorientated. The loss of a number of buildings and this new hub means that the familiar old station is no more than a vestige of the past.

This was also the first workout for my new Fuji XF 18-135mm zoom lens, which brought features closer and seemed to beef up my shooting power.

Click first image to view this collection

Television Centre in west London is currently a hive of activity. But not a place where programmes are being made by a hive of dedicated staff. It’s become a noisy building site where the former BBC hub is being transformed into a complex of homes, a hotel and other facilities.

I pass by the knot of cranes, bulldozers and diggers on my way to work at what’s left of the BBC in this area. The ‘donut’ has been stripped bare, while other familiar locations including the restaurant building are being pulled apart.

Most startling of all is the demolition of an entire wing of the complex where I worked for several years, leaving the spur – now occupied by BBC Worldwide – standing alone. Offices and corridors on the 7th floor that I knew so well have long since turned to dust.

Watching such a familiar landmark undergoing such drastic change is somehow difficult – yet fascinating – to witness every day. But at the same time I remind myself that its fabric was sagging around the edges and was at times not my favourite place on Earth. Life moves on…

As for these photographs, they are not intended to be artful or easy on the eye. They’re documentary snapshots capturing the former BBC Television Centre on 2 October 2015.