Bush House, the Central London building that served, for some seventy years, as the home of the BBC World Service, was originally a trade center. Built in the early nineteen-twenties, it was commissioned and financed by the American industrialist Irving T. Bush, designed by the American architect Harvey Wiley Corbett, and dedicated “to the friendship of English-speaking peoples.” The BBC European Service moved into Bush House in 1940, and was joined, in 1958, by the other departments of the Overseas Service. For the next half century, the building was home to the BBC’s shortwave news services, which broadcast around the world in as many as forty-five languages. In 2012, the World Service moved to Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC.
To commemorate its time in Bush House, the BBC commissioned the Colombian photographer Manuel Vazquez to photograph the building during its last year as the home of the World Service. Vazquez told me that he was initially attracted to the assignment because of his interest in places where information is created and disseminated. While photographing Bush House, he was drawn to the abundance of obsolete technology, an interest that has inspired him, more recently, to photograph other abandoned broadcasting facilities across Europe. _
All photographs by Manuel Vazquez.
