In May 1932 the BBC’s new headquarters building, Broadcasting House, was completed in central London. Its exterior signalled the necessary gravitas of a modern corporation charged with broadcasting to nation and empire. Its interior housed 19 studios designed by the emerging leaders of Britain’s modernist movement: Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates and the Australian architect Raymond McGrath.
In this talk, Elizabeth Darling take participants on a tour of their studios, showing how they created an ‘inventive modernism’ that expressed the modernity of the new technology of broadcasting. This architecture of the ether, described as ‘alive, brave and new’, was the first public commission for modernist architects in Britain.
Elizabeth Darling is a leading architectural historian, and specialises in histories of modernist cultures in Britain. Her new book was published in June 2026 'Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC' (Lund Humphries).
