Last updated May 2004
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The home of BBC Television and BBC News.
Opened:
29 June 1960, as the BBC's first purpose-built centre for television
production.
Location:
four miles outside central London on Wood Lane, Shepherd's Bush.
The site
was once used for the Franco-British exhibition of 1908.
Wood Lane
is also where the BBC White City buildings can be
found.
Television
Centre architect: Graham Dawbarn.
He
was given a 50 page brief and looking for inspiration went to a local
pub.
He pulled
out an old envelope and drew the triangular shape of the site on the
back.
He then
drew a question mark in the middle of the triangle.
How could
he design a centre with eight studios, production galleries, dressing
rooms, camera workshops, recording areas and offices to support them?
The centre
also
needed an area to bring in trucks with sets and a separate area to bring
in audiences and guests.
He looked
at the question mark and in a flash of inspiration realised that it
would make the perfect design.
Features:
a distinctive circular main block - grouped around this circular building
are the studios, linked by a covered carriage way to a scenery block
which allows swift movement of scenery in and out of the studios.
The sculpture
in the central garden of the building depicts Helios, the Greek god
of the sun.
Designed
by T B Huxley-Jones, and erected in 1960 on the opening of the building,
it represents the radiation of television light around the world.
The two
reclining figures at the bottom are sound and vision, the two components
of television.
Television
Centre is now also home to BBC News - the News Centre opened in 1998
at the front of the building.
Before
Television Centre: for nearly 25 years the BBC had improvised by
adapting other buildings originally designed for other purposes.
Examples
included two small studios at Alexandra Palace.
Six more
studios in London were converted from film studios - four of these were
in Lime Grove, which had been bought from Rank.
In 1953
the Shepherd's Bush Empire, a converted music hall, became Television
Theatre and in 1956 two more film studios were converted at Riverside.
Television
Theatre has since reverted to its former title as a venue for live music.
