The London Listings: Chan & Eayrs’ stunning live/work home on Shoreditch High Street is the epitome of style The London List

Posted in Architecture, London, London List

By Sam Bathe on 12 Dec 2018

Occupying the entire third floor of a former factory building in Shoreditch, architecture duo Chan & Eayrs’ glorious three-bedroom live/work apartment is the epitome of design, craftsmanship and personality. Show the rest of this post…

Featuring a sweeping open-plan layout, soft green plaster walls meet texture oak joinery and a hand-made Beldi tile floor create a mesmeric living space. The attention to detail unsurpassed with hand-woven linen shutters, gold-finish kitchen fittings and a stunning roll-top pastel bathtub.

Overlooking Calvert Avenue, the apartment is located right in the heart of Shoreditch, just walking distance from Redchurch Street and Columbia Road, and is on the market with The Modern House at £3.2m: www.themodernhouse.com/sales-list/shoreditch-high-street

The London List Review: ‘Wasteland Experience’ is a thrill-a-minute adventure that puts you right in the middle of an unhinged post-zombie distopia The London List

Posted in London, London List

By Sam Bathe on 18 Jul 2018

Adrift-Film

While immersive and promenade theatre have picked up real steam in recent years, jumping from an experience where you live to narrative, to where you _are_ the narrative, has always been the final frontier. Zed’s exhillarating new production, Wasteland Experience, manages just that. Show the rest of this post…

Directly following on from their lauded zombie experience, Wasteland picks up half a decade down the line after a scorched earth strategy left the UK in ruins. With the undead finally rotten away, tribes have formed across the UK, with a few key outposts forming the basis of a new society. But when a number of traders and tribespeople enter the outpost, and none make it out, it seems something might be a miss. So you are part of a special team sent to investigate and rescue any surivors, that is, if you can make it out yourself.

Adrift-Film

Set inside a full-size, derelict shopping centre, complete with open shopping concourse, dis-used stores, and a myriad of back-stairways and eerie service corridors, your arena feels straight out of a Call of Duty video game, and you have the weaponry to match.

Wasteland Experience kits out the players with the iCombat tactical training system, an amazingly realistic weapon simulation used to train police and military around the world. You’re given a would-be semi-automatic weapon, complete gas-powered recoil, noise, muzzle flash, and a cartridge which you have to reload every 30 shots. There’s also hit detection without any projectiles being fired, so your shots will register with the enemy, and likewise you can take a hit, meaning your gun will power down for a couple of minutes before powering back up again.

Adrift-Film

As you play through the Wasteland Experience, more often than not, you’ll be in a moment of terror or exhiliration. There are firefight sequences where you have to shoot your way out of a corner, blacked out rooms that you have to clear one-by-one, and a myriad of wierd, wonderful, and downright terrifying characters standing in your way. It’s like 2 hours inside a steampunk first-person shooter, meets Mad Max, meets Silent Hill.

When the experience finally drew to a close, my nerves were shredded. I was exhausted from being chased through corridors, and totally swept up by the chilling narrative concocted by the Zed team. Yet I was ready to go straight back in. A totally unique experience that somehow at £99 per ticket, manages to be one of the best bargains around. This isn’t immersive theatre, Wasteland Experience is living it.

For more information and tickets head to the Zed Events website: www.zedevents.co.uk

The London List: Kew Gardens’ famous Temperate House reopens after an extensive £41m, five-year restoration The London List

Posted in London, London List

By Sam Bathe on 16 May 2018

Closed for the last five years while Donald Insall Associates oversaw a £41m restoration, Kew Gardens’ Temperate House reopens its doors today with its 10,000 plants now replanted in the building. The world’s largest Victorian glasshouse, the Grade 1 listed building, was carefully dismantled, cleaned, re-painted and re-glazed, replicating the original place blue and off-white colour scheme. Now back to its full splendour, the Temperate House will again welcome guests, some 155 years since it first opened in 1863.

Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Richmond, TW9 3AE
www.kew.org/kew-gardens/attractions/temperate-house

The London List: Alpha Shadows brings hip Japanese menswear and West Coast ceramics to Peckham’s Bussey Building The London List

Posted in London, London List, Style

By Sam Bathe on 2 Jan 2018

Located in the Bussey Building in Peckham, Alpha Shadows is London’s best kept secret for trendy Japanese menswear and Californian ceramics. Started by Tom Piercy, Alpha Shadows brings many of their minimalist Japanese labels over to the UK for the first time, stocking everything from slick chambray shirts, to leather accessories, beautiful hand-made footwear and effortlessly cool quilted jackets. Show the rest of this post…

On the other side of the store is their amazing homeware collection. Of course carrying a range from staple Hasami Ceramics, Alpha Shadows is the only UK stockist for dreamy California potters Kat & Roger and A Question of Eagles. Such is the demand, when new Kat & Roger pieces come into stock, most are sold out within the first few days. This is one store, more than worth the trip across the river.

Alpha Shadows, The Bussey Building, 133 Copeland Road, London, SE15 3SN
www.alphashadows.com

The London List: teamLab take over the Pace London gallery with interactive exhibition, ‘Transcending Boundaries’The London List

Posted in Art, London, London List

By Sam Bathe on 3 Feb 2017

Reminiscent of the iconic Rain Room in Barbican’s The Curve gallery, Transcending Boundaries is a collection of remarkable interactive, digital artworks from Tokyo-based, teamLab. Including eight installations across three rooms in London’s Pace Gallery, the artworks surround visitors, transforming and changing shape as guests move through the space. From a virtual waterfall that flows around your feet, to flowers that bloom across visitors’ clothing, pieces are created in real time depending on how you interact with the gallery space. Exploring the role of digital technology in transcending physical and virtual boundaries, Transcending Boundaries runs until March 11th at Pace Gallery.

Pace London, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, W1S 3ET
www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/12840/transcending-boundaries

The London List Review: Bradford Cox opens for himself for a fantastic Deerhunter, Atlas Sound double-bill at Shepherd’s Bush Empire The London List

Posted in London, London List, Music

By Tim Baggott on 8 Nov 2015

If any other frontman chose to open for themselves on the final night of their UK tour, it would seem like a cynical move. But for some reason, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound, gets away with it tonight. Show the rest of this post…

A reverb-drenched, improvisational opening set from Atlas Sound saw each song take on a new form. Featuring a haunting rendition of Shelia from 2009’s Logos and an almost unrecognisable version of Cold as Ice from 2008’s Let The Blind…, the set was as spellbinding as it was unpredictable.

Perhaps acting as a Bradford Cox palette cleanser, when Deerhunter finally take to the stage they open with Desire Lines, a track sung by Lockett Pundt (guitarist). The set that follows is dominated by tracks from the latest record, Fading Fontier. Album opener All the Same was delivered with resounding confidence and was definitely the punchiest of the new tracks.

However, it was still the fan favourites from 2008’s Microcastle that received the best response from the crowd. The crushing guitars on Cover Me (Slowly) sounded colossal, filling the venue from wall to wall and the build up during the extended conclusion of Nothing Ever Happened whips the audience into an all-too-brief, beautiful frenzy.

The London Listings: 6a Architects’ Hanover Yard House feels warm and lived-in yet effortlessly modern The London List

Posted in Architecture, London, London List

By Sam Bathe on 5 Nov 2015

Located on a private mews in suave Islington, this two-storey home by 6a Architects features an amazing open-plan space and stunning interior filled with picture frames, pottery and books, everywhere you look. Though unfortunately most of the lived-in warmth will leave with the current owners, the loft-style Hanover Yard House is still perfect for the new owners to make it their own. Show the rest of this post…

The kitchen, dining area and living space are all inter-connected, with the bedroom only loosely divided from the rest of the open-plan first floor. A spiral staircase connects to the fully-irrigated roof which also houses a number of solar panels, which alongside an eco-friendly heat pump and underfloor heating help the property to be environmentally-friendly. Downstairs, the ground floor features a reception room plus two separate artists’ studios, accessed from across the mews.

On the market for £3.8m, while a lot of the value is in the ultra-accessible location, such a unique, charismatic space doesn’t come up on the London property market very often either.

The Hanover Yard House is on the market for £3.8m through The Modern House: www.themodernhouse.net/sales-list/hanover-yard

The London List: Ann Veronica Janssens latest installation explores colour and light at the Wellcome Collection The London List

Posted in Art, London, London List

By Sam Bathe on 15 Oct 2015

Invading the Wellcome Collection with mysterious coloured mist, Ann Veronica Janssens’ Yellowbluepink installation explores perception through the use of colour and light. One of the artists behind the Hayward Gallery’s remarkable Light Show back in 2013, Janssens again revels in the immateriality of such a medium, here playing with the notion of what you see, and how you see it. Yellowbluepink launches States of Mind, the Wellcome Collection’s year-long investigation into the experience of human consciousness.

Yellowbluepink is on show at the Wellcome Collection until 3rd January 2016
Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE

The London List: Alex Chinneck unveils his latest surrealist sculpture for this year’s London Design Festival The London List

Posted in Art, London, London List

By Sam Bathe on 18 Sep 2015

Best known for his gravity-defying installations, artist Alex Chinneck returns with another remarkable surrealist sculpture for the London Design Festival. Balancing a 35 metre-tall electricity pylon on its tip, A Bullet From A Shooting Star comprises 450 steel pieces, constructed from 1186 metres of steel weighing 15 tons. Taking residence on the Greenwich Penisula, the sculpture is one of the real highlights of this year’s festival and can be viewed from North Greenwich Station, the Emirates Airline cable car, the Thames Clipper service, Canary Wharf and all planes that fly to and from City Airport.

Alex Chinneck’s ‘A Bullet From A Shooting Star’ runs from September 19th-27th on the Greenwich Peninsula, London
www.nowgallery.co.uk/exhibitions/alex-chinneck-a-bullet-from-a-shooting-star/

The London List Review: Secret Cinema take on Star Wars for a hugely ambitious, and expensive, night of fun The London List

Posted in Film, London, London List

By Sam Bathe on 7 Sep 2015

Normally keeping the movie under wraps until you are through the door, Secret Cinema have recreated Star Wars much to the delight of fans across the country.

If you are not familiar with Secret Cinema, the ‘live cinema’ company curate events that fuse film and theatre, re-creating large-scale immersive experiences that blur the lines of fiction and reality. By now it probably sounds like a broken record, but yet again their latest production is their most ambitious yet. Show the rest of this post…

Taking on beloved cult franchise, Star Wars, for a remarkable four-month London run, the show is inspired by the A New Hope, with fans living the first of the original trilogy before watching sequel The Empire Strikes Back at the end of the night.

In line with the spirit of the event we can’t reveal much more about what happens on the night, but rest assured, the Secret Cinema team have meticulously recreated a world so treasured by fans across the globe.

With audience members taking real pleasure in dressing up as characters from the film, don’t miss the start of the event as things instantly kick into gear. With actors recreating story lines from A New Hope in a number of picture-perfect sets, it’s a great experience and you really feel part of the action. Though the sheer scale of the audience can make you feel lost in the production at times, if you explore and talk to the characters there’s plenty to do and you might even kick off some of the night’s big events.

Newcomers to Star Wars (yes, there are some out there) shouldn’t be put off, and it’s not a precursor that you be a huge franchise buff, but at £78 per ticket and £52 for children you probably need to a fan to justify the expense. You’ll easily spend another £30 on food and drinks on the night too.

Because of the price, Secret Cinema’s The Empire Strikes Back production is not an unmissable experience. Few nights out in London can justify a £100+ all-in price tag, and though this production does come close, I’d be lying if I thought it was totally worth it. That said, fans are still flocking to the event in their droves and there’s no doubt you’ll have a lot of fun, just here’s hoping the next production doesn’t jump in price again, with tickets costing almost double what they used to just three years ago.

Secret Cinema presents Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back runs until September 27th. Tickets are available from the Secret Cinema website: www.secretcinema.org/tickets.html

Photography by Olivia Weetch, Marianne Chua, Al Overdrive and Mike Massaro, respectively.