George Val Myer was a British Architect and portrait painter appointed by the British Broadcasting Corporation to design one of the first purpose built broadcast buildings in the world, Broadcasting House

Broadcasting House

Broadcasting House is the headquarters and registered office of the BBC in Portland Place and Langham Place, London.The building includes the BBC Radio Theatre from where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience...

, Langham Place, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 completed in 1932.

Life and career

Myer started in practice on his own account at nineteen, specialising in medium-sized houses, then continued in partnership with John W Fair (Fair and Myer) including designing houses in Gidea Park

Gidea Park

Gidea Park is a place in the London Borough of Havering, east London, England. Gidea Park is a part of Romford post town.-History:Gidea Park is the location of the "Romford Garden Suburb" constructed in 1910 to 1911 on the Gidea Hall and Balgores Estates as an exhibition of town planning...

, Romford, Essex.

By 1928, his career had progressed sufficiently to have completed the design of Asia House in Lime Street (1912–13) and Portsoken House in the Minories (1927–28). This experience in office design would prove invaluable to his commission for Broadcasting House as would his experience as a collaborative commercial architect.

The later partnership of George Val Myer and F J Watson-Hart was to undertake significant commissions in the reconstruction of Park Lane

Park Lane (road)

Park Lane is a major road in the City of Westminster, in Central London.-History:Originally a country lane running north-south along what is now the eastern boundary of Hyde Park, it became a fashionable residential address from the eighteenth century onwards, offering both views across Hyde Park...

 for the Grosvenor Estate. Aldford House (1930–2) was a modernistic apartment block with classical stylings imposed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Fountain House (1935–38) followed the design guidance of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

Val Myer was a successful commercial architect whose work typified the conventions of that remit and his time. His notability derives from his design response to the opportunities presented by his most significant commission.

Broadcasting House

Val Myer and Watson-Hart had been working in 1927 for the consortium headed by Lord Waring that owned the sites at the bottom of Portland Place that the BBC had identified as a potential location for their new broadcast building. Val Myer, starting as the landlord’s architect, came to undertake the lease-holder’s bespoke design. For the BBC, their own civil engineer, M T Tudsbery had selected the site and development strategy and was to determine the technical and functional brief.

Val Myer named his original design 'the Top Hat design' and it was frequently compared, from its first appearance, to a 1930s ocean liner

Ocean liner

An ocean liner is a ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule. Liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes .Cargo vessels running to a schedule are sometimes referred to as...

 for its clean-cut lines and allusions to New York Art Deco. The building linked emphatically to the rest of Regent Street

Regent Street

Regent Street is one of the major shopping streets in London's West End, well known to tourists and Londoners alike, and famous for its Christmas illuminations...

 through its complementary use of Portland stone but was modernistic in spirit, and adorned with radical sculptural commissions by Eric Gill

Eric Gill

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...

, most notably the statues of Ariel and Prospero.

Val Myer worked alongside M T Tudsbery and formulated the approach of locating the office accommodation around the outside of the building to insulate a massive central brick tower of 22 broadcast studios from noise intrusion. Acoustic separation was pursued through the development of novel constructional technologies and strategies at all levels of design. Val Myer’s work as chief architect of the building and the concert hall was supplemented by that of a BBC team of architects for the interiors headed by Raymond McGrath that included Serge Chermayeff

Serge Chermayeff

Serge Ivan Chermayeff was a Russian born, British architect, industrial designer, writer, and co-founder of several architectural societies, including the American Society of Planners and Architects....

, Wells Coates

Wells Coates

Wells Wintemute Coates OBE was an architect, designer and writer. He was, for most of his life, an ex-patriate Canadian architect who is best known for his work in England...

, Dorothy Warren Trotter and Edward Mauffe, each a bespoke commission for a distinct function.

War damage, technological change and the severe environmental limitations and inflexibility of the original design have caused the original studio interiors to be almost wholly replaced. Key surviving interiors have been restored in works concluded in 2009.

External links

• Images of Val Myer