ABSTRACT
In 2013, the newsgathering and broadcast operations of the BBC completed their move from various sites around London to the refurbished and expanded Broadcasting House in Portland Place. For the first time in the history of the corporation, news broadcasting for television, radio and online was brought under one roof. Designed by Richard MacCormac of MacCormac Jamieson Prichard (phase one) but completed by Sheppard Robson and HOK for Bovis Lend Lease (phase two), the complex centres on the ‘global newsroom’ of the BBC’s entire news operations. This chapter explores the spatial construction of a building designed around Europe’s largest newsroom, one designed to align journalistic transparency with a carefully controlled public visibility. Adopting Lefebvre’s distinction between absolute space and abstract space, the discussion of the building in BBC’s television news is shown to situate the corporation in both the absolute space of central London and Broadcasting House, and the abstract space of the digital news economy. The chapter explores how the building is used in the construction of an iconic mediated image, both in terms of the choreography or hourly countdowns to news bulletins and as a living backdrop for the satirical comedy W1A.
