Tim Waterman

Landscape Studies, Food Studies, Utopian Studies

Living and Studying in London

by Tim-Waterman on September 19, 2024, no comments

Here is a list of resources I worked to compile with the help of colleagues at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and which I have continued to update for the benefit of our landscape architecture students. There’s so much good information here I think it’s worthwhile to share here too! I’ve removed the Bartlett- and UCL-specific links, but I’ve left the rest unedited. There’s so much to enjoy about living and studying in London!

Search Engines

Google is no longer a reliable search engine, especially for academic purposes (due to ‘platform decay’ or enshittification). Duckduckgo remains reliable, and it doesn’t track your searches. There is also a specialised academic search engine at BASE, the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, which has been in operation for two decades.

Journals

Scholarly journals are incredibly useful resources, with short papers addressing specific issues in research. Most of these are available digitally. Some of note include Landscape Research, The Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA), Topos, and Places. Also professional magazines can be very good for finding projects to write about, both contemporary ones and historical ones in their archives. These include Landscape Architecture Magazine, Landscape: the journal of the Landscape Institute, and The Architectural Review. There are also trade- or profession-focused magazines such as Architects’ Journal, Building Design, and Pro Landscaper.

Archives

There are many specialist archives across London including the RIBA Collections, with prints, drawings, photographs, and writings; the Bishopsgate Institute has an archive of labour history; The National Archives are located at Kew; and The Landscape Institute Archive and Library is a short train trip away in Reading at the Museum of English Rural Life, itself a delight.

Maps and Plans

If you are fascinated by maps there are many great collections you can consult, either in person or digitally.

An immense wealth of maps, images, documents and so much more at the British Library’s digital collections.

The National Library of Scotland’s map archive is a wonder. Of course they also have larger digital collections, just click home.

For your first assignment in BARC0114 you will require access to Digimap, which is an exceedingly useful resource.

Films

Documentaries and fiction films both are excellent resources to research landscape and how it is understood and represented. In addition to the standard websites in which you pay to view films (see, for example, BFIPlayer or MUBI), the Bartlett Library and the UCL libraries have DVDs (really!) which you can check out. Also there are some excellent free resources available to you as students such as BoB (Box of Broadcasts) and Kanopy, which has a huge selection of films on architecture, art, and design. The BFIPlayer is now also free for UCL staff and students. Instructions for how to sign up are here.

The BFI also has an excellent (if slightly clunky) resource of films geolocated on a map of Britain, Britain on Film. I have compiled a list of films featuring London on this website here.

Walks and Site Visits

Nothing could be better as a method for conducting landscape research than direct observation. If you are in London, you may use the following resources, and there are many more. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but a paper central London street map will help you to understand London as a continuous whole, and also show you just how easy it is to walk everywhere—for instance it is only a 20 minute walk from Gordon Square (next to 22 Gordon Street/The Bartlett) to Covent Garden and just 40 minutes to the Southbank Centre.

In a little over an hour, you can walk from Gordon Square to Borough Market or as far as the Portobello Road and there is much to see on the way. If you download the Citymapper app to your phone this is hugely useful.

London Footprints is a charming relic of 1990s web design and offers a set of walks organised by London neighbourhoods.

Open House also lists a great set of self-guided tours across London.

The City of London lists a set of Self-Guided Walks and Trails.

The Architecture Foundation’s London Architecture Guide is free to download on the App Store and Google Play, and the Architecture Foundation offers tours (for which there is a cost).

You might also try out the Open Space Atlas.

Museums

You can’t swing a cat in London without hitting a fabulous museum. Many are free, and full of the most amazing things, like The British Museum (only a ten-minute stroll from the Bartlett), Tate Britain, Tate Modern, or The National Gallery. But also look out for the small museums and galleries. The Wellcome Collection, just next door to the Bartlett, has excellent exhibitions; Sir John Soane’s Museum is pure astonishment; The Estorick Collection specialises in Italian art … there are just so many …

No matter where you are in London or the UK you can use the map function on the New Exhibitions website to find a comprehensive listing of everything that’s on.

Student Art Pass

The Student Art Pass costs a mere £10 and gets you free or cut-price access to museums and galleries across the UK. It’s a great deal and only runs for a limited time every year, so get in there early!

Institutions

There are many organisations you can join which will provide research and networking opportunities, events, and lectures. You should all join The Landscape Institute (and the London Branch of the LI, which also has parties) as student members, which is free, and you will then be notified about events and opportunities, including travel grants. The Landscape Research Group also provides a useful resource for a small membership fee, and also gives access to events and grants.

ELASA, The European Landscape Architecture Student Association, hosts two meetings per year with very affordable package visits to beautiful destinations, and it’s a great way to meet like-minded people.

Lectures and Events

Again, there is an embarrassment of riches of lectures, panel discussions, and talks. You should certainly attend as many Bartlett lectures as you can—you will receive announcements of these as they happen. Many lectures and events which are now digital are recorded and placed online.

Online Resources

There is so, so much, but here are a few:

BBC iPlayer: lots of amazing documentaries (some listed below) on art, culture and architecture.

Open Library: Amazing resource for borrowing books

Bookshop.org “is an online bookshop with a mission to financially support local, independent bookshops.” You can also use www.addall.com & www.alibris.co.uk. Addall and Alibris scour all online bookshop catalogues globally, including and especially independent stores. Please support independent booksellers and avoid the monsters like Amazon or Abebooks. Also our surrounding neighbourhoods—Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, and Soho are still full of great independent bookshops.

At British Library Sounds you can listen to everything from songs to regional accents to oral history. There are also sound maps.

UbuWeb is a Great source of many, many avant-garde papers, films, sound recordings.

London Sound Survey covers all kinds of sounds of London and beyond, contemporary and historic.

Pathé News – British Pathé TV is a subscription video-on-demand service designed for specialist audiences such as history buffs, royal watchers, cinema aficionados and train enthusiasts. It complements the British Pathé newsreel archive, which is free-to-view on the main website.

The Internet Archive is a vast archive of films, images, and much more, all free.

For historic audio recordings check out the US Library of Congress’s National Jukebox

The full Library of Congress digital collection is here.

Open Culture is an amazing collection of everything you can imagine available digitally, including lots of links to free films, including Hitchcock, Chaplin, and Tarkovsky.

Open Democracy provides thoughtful, scholarly, in-depth news-focused articles.

Other Exhibitions and Events

Keep an eye out for the following venues/institutions (by no means an exhaustive list!):

Cafe Oto
Whitechapel Gallery
Mosaic Rooms
Somerset House
Auto Italia South East
Autograph ABP
Lisson Gallery
Barbican Centre

180 The Strand
Chisenhale Gallery
Filet 

Iniva (which holds the Stuart Hall Library)
Parasol Unit
PEER
Royal Drawing School 
(offering free and affordable courses to the public)
ICA
St John on Bethnal Green
St Martins in the Fields
Stour Space
The Art Pavilion Mile End
The Jazz Cafe

Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (and all other London borough archives)
C4RD

Universities:

Goldsmiths Visual Cultures
UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre
LSE
Kings
Birkbeck
The Bartlett

London Travel

For London transportation see Transport for London’s Journey Planner or Citymapper.

London tube & buses: 18+ Student Oyster photocard: If you’re 18 or over, a student and living in a London borough, you can get discounted travel with an Oyster photocard. 

Cycling: Cycling is a super efficient way of getting around and London is a lot more compressed than it appears. Safety first – always wear a helmet, use lights at night, and err on the side of caution.

There are a number of companies with rentable bikes dotted around the city which can usually be picked up through downloading their apps. The most common are the red Santander cycles: Hiring a Santander Cycle costs £2 for unlimited journeys up to 30 minutes, within a 24 hour period. For journeys longer than 30 minutes, you pay £2 for each additional 30 minutes.

You can also get a second hand bike quite cheaply – don’t skimp on the lock though, it is worth it in the long run to spend a bit of money and get a good one. Bikes can be found on Gumtree. Be safe if you go to view/buy one of these – best not to go alone and/or meet in a public place.

There are also a decent number of independent second hand bike shops around London. These come with added benefits of having been recently serviced and guaranteed not stolen. A couple of good shops below:

East
Paradise Cycles

South
The Bike Project
Brixton Cycles

North
Camden Cycles

Repairs: You will get a puncture. Drop into almost any bike shop near you when this happens and they will likely sort you out straight away for around a tenner.

London Bike Kitchen Awesome ethical bike workshop that does DIY classes and repairs.

Evans Cycles: These are all over London and will usually do you a solid and fix a puncture on the spot if you get caught out in town.

Walking

Do check out walking distances in London – newcomers often rely on the tube and don’t realise how close things can be above ground. For the more adventurous ramblers, TfL has a number of great walking routes that have been set up for discovering the city on foot.

UK & International Travel

For booking trains in Britain use the National Rail website or Trainline which has a small booking fee but a very useful app. You might also be able to save a significant amount of money if you travel by train regularly with the 16-25 Railcard or the 26-30 Railcard.

Eurostar will whisk you quickly, easily, and sustainably to Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, and they have a new partnership with Thalys that allows you to book onward journeys too. You can travel from London to Barcelona, Milano, or Zurich in a single day and gaze out the window at fascinating landscapes the whole way. Rail travel in Europe is the best way to go just about everywhere. You can even avoid flying to places like Dublin, which can be reached overland for £50 each way via Rail and Sail by train to Holyhead, where a very comfortable ferry crosses the Irish Sea. There’s no better way to approach a port city than on the water.

For international travel The Man in Seat 61 website is invaluable and international tickets can be booked easily at Rail Europe, also available as an app. Rome2Rio is also incredibly useful for “how to get anywhere by plane, train, bus, ferry, & car”.

Finally Organic Maps is an offline maps app based on OpenStreetMap (a project which began at UCL). It won’t track you or spy on you and it will extend your phone’s battery life a lot.