London booth. Why is a telephone box in London red? Story. DIY English telephone booth: difficult aspects of detailing and assembly
We are unlikely to be wrong if we assume that the mention of London makes your imagination draw a gloomy landscape, covered in gray haze, through which the spire of the Elizabeth Tower peeks through. The general bleak picture is enlivened only by the bright red double-decker omnibuses scurrying through the streets. Apparently, it was precisely because of the increased “nebula” of Albion that the British, acting contrary to their love for restrained tones, always tried to give expressive colors to the key objects of their capital: simply so that they could be easily seen. Along with the bus, another element of the urban environment of London was destined to “dress” in scarlet: it became the English telephone booth, which subsequently turned from an ordinary utilitarian thing into a recognizable symbol of England.
So, the red booth, intended for private telephone conversations, now displaced from the London streets by mobile communications, has migrated to interiors, coming under the close attention of craftsmen. And no wonder - such an exclusive item is difficult to manufacture; you cannot put it into series: furniture manufacturers rarely include this interior attribute in their “price list”. The popularity of the London rarity is consistently high, especially among restaurateurs and adherents of design with elements of kitsch. What can we recommend to those who have decided to make an English telephone booth with their own hands?
“Reincarnation” of the English telephone booth in interior design
Created in the distant 20s for clearly defined purposes, the red telephone booth in most cases continues to be used in the same way: it is installed in offices, restaurants, bars and other public places, setting up an intimate meeting area. The only difference is that previously the London payphone was an exterior detail, but now it demonstrates its worth as an interior accessory. However, introducing such an accent spot as a scarlet booth into the interior space requires a certain delicacy - only a few styles will match it. In its “native” shade, the London kiosk harmoniously interacts with design in the style of Retro, Vintage, Pop Art and Steampunk, in brownish wood - with Neoclassicism and Modernism. 
Despite the operating model that was once set, creative thought has found many more uses for the English telephone booth. Shower cubicles and columns for built-in refrigerators, bookcases and wardrobes, buffets, bars and display cases - the lattice structure of the cubicle looks impressive in any interpretation. By turning the red telephone box over onto one of the side faces, you can build an extravagant chest of drawers, a cabinet, or even a frame for upholstered furniture. The most affordable way to organically incorporate a London replica into the interior is to install a red interior door with a frame typical of an English payphone.
Another well-known technique, widely used in interior design to achieve expression, is changing the usual scale of objects for decorative purposes. Agree, a lamp in the form of a telephone booth will look quite unusual - a miniature analogue of a carmine payphone can take the form of a night light, sconce or ceiling pendant. The significant mass of glazing built into the London kiosk serves as a good basis for the chandelier’s shade to work well as a light source, scattering the rays emanating from the electric lamp. 
DIY English telephone booth: what to make it from
Although the first London kiosks were cast from cast iron, in the interior you can more often find an English payphone of a wooden structure, less often of a metal one. For home production of cabins, the optimal types of wood - inexpensive and easy to process - include pine, alder, cedar, and birch. A telephone booth made of oak or ash will cost more, and it will be more difficult to manufacture, but it will have a good appearance. It is especially important to choose a rock with a beautiful texture when you plan to finish it with varnish, wax or oil, and not paint the box scarlet. However, paint and varnish materials that emphasize the natural structure of wood require filigree sanding of parts, otherwise all surface flaws will appear doubly. Decorative coating of the booth in red is an easier option, but it is not so simple: small roughness and burrs under a layer of paint will turn into an unsightly fringe. DIY English telephone booth: difficult aspects of detailing and assembly
As with any other piece of joinery, you need to start working on the London payphone with a drawing. All construction of its parts is best done on a scale of 1:10: the format is optimal for designing small structural units. Of course, it is advisable to have at least the slightest drawing skill, otherwise, on paper, the complex configuration of the booth risks turning into a puzzle for you, creating additional complexities. As for the structural features of the English telephone box, its load-bearing elements are walls consisting of frames, lower panels and glazing, assembled from pillars and transverse wooden blocks.To form a connection, grooves are selected at the inner ends of the vertical strapping parts, and the jumpers are equipped with elongated tenons (ridges). Flat combs, which are traditionally used for assembling cabinet furniture, can be replaced with insertable cylindrical tenons - dowels. The most difficult thing in the procedure for manufacturing a “groove-ridge” interface is to achieve an exact match of the mating parts, that is, so that the ridge fits tightly into the groove, without play. Perfect grinding of connecting elements at the time of product assembly is possible only if a professional tool is used at the stage of turning them - a double-sided cutter.
Another difficulty in the process of assembling the sides of a telephone booth is making recesses for installing the panel in the strapping jumpers. The ridge of the panel should not rest against the bottom of the groove, for which the ends and edges of the panel itself undergo lengthy processing with a special cutter. It is also not easy to carefully tuck the glass into the frame of the box: the glazing element is inserted into a quarter, which is made with a manual milling cutter on the inner edge of the slats after assembling and gluing all the structural parts.
As a rule, to fasten glass in quarters, figured layouts are used - glazing beads - which are nailed to the side frame with small nails; This is not an easy task, since you can split the bar itself and ruin the strapping. It is also important to fit the layout to the quarter exactly, without gaps. If you glue a lattice structure of slats directly onto the glass - to create the appearance of an internal binding - then on the back side of the side panel you will need exactly the same part, otherwise the glue spots visible through the glass will not look entirely aesthetically pleasing.
Do-it-yourself English telephone booth: a budget option for making it from door panels
Looking at the red telephone booth without bias, you will notice that its walls exactly resemble paneled doors - this is the clue that will allow you to make an imitation of a London relic with the least effort. In the absence of professional tools, without which the production of a telephone booth is virtually doomed to failure, you can use ready-made door panels with a lathing, the design reminiscent of a classic London payphone of the 20s. With this cunning option for assembling an English telephone booth with your own hands, all you have to do is make a base in the form of a plinth, then install and rigidly connect three doors with confirmations, cover the structure with a lid, tuck the door frame into the opening, and put the fourth panel on hinges - the budget option is ready. If desired, to make the result of your architecture more similar to the original, you can decorate the roof of the structure with semicircular pediments, paint the cabin crimson, and use a stencil to apply the image of the English crown and the white inscription “TELEPHONE”.We hope our tips will help you make an English telephone booth with your own hands. If you don’t find the time, tools, space or just desire for this, you can always order this stylish piece of furniture from our specialists.
If we recall the most famous and familiar symbols of England, the red telephone booth will certainly be named among the main ones: it is quite difficult for tourists to imagine London without this invariable attribute, because traditional photos of telephone booths are in almost every guidebook. Yet it is this element of England's streets that is now at risk of destruction, thanks to officials from the European Commission based in Brussels. According to this supranational body, red telephone booths have already lost their functional significance and “do not correspond to today's realities”!
Despite this European Commission verdict, red telephone boxes are not just ordinary public telephones, according to Gavin Stamp, an architectural historian, they are a "product of a past civilization" in Britain.
How the telephone booth came to be in London
Only eight years had passed since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, and public telephones had already appeared in Britain: the British were the first in the world to install telephone booths on the streets, rightly judging that a useful invention could be effectively used to make money in a society that needs communication.
The question immediately arose as to how best to place these public telephones so that it would be convenient for both those who call from them and the owners of these telephones.
At first, these “public call bureaus” were located in stores, but this turned out to be not a very good option: firstly, it was almost impossible to talk calmly, only a thin curtain separated the customers from the caller, and secondly, there was no opportunity to talk about anything important - it was easy to overhear, thirdly, the opening hours of the stores were strictly limited.
After this method of placing public telephones was considered inappropriate and inconvenient, it was decided to place the telephones on the streets: in wooden kiosks. But here, too, many problems arose: it was easy to steal coins from the kiosks, and the walls quickly became unusable due to the actions of vandals. However, despite all the problems, society needed public telephones.
A significant step forward in this matter was made in 1924, when red telephone booths were invented. The competition for the best example of a standard telephone kiosk was won by architect Giles Gilbert Scott, who used monumental proportions, cast iron, thick glass, neoclassical columns, and an arched roof for his telephone booth. This design was accepted without reservation, and the only thing that the London Post Office subsequently changed about this design was the color in which the booth was painted. The architect planned a silver one, but according to the sensible thinking of the entrepreneurs, telephone booths painted red were easier to notice in any weather.
After the project was approved, these telephone booths began to be installed not only throughout Britain, but also in its colonies (for example, in Indian museums you can still find photos of telephone booths from Britain), and in other friendly countries. The telephone booth became a kind of symbol of British unity for many businessmen and travelers who were forced to spend a long time outside their native shores.
Red telephone booths today
Alas, photos of telephone booths are perhaps the only thing that will remain for tourists in the near future: the number of these unique historical monuments is rapidly declining (over the past five years, the number of telephone booths in London has decreased by more than 10 times, and currently stands at only 13 thousand throughout Britain). Unfortunately, modern people prefer mobile phones to public telephones.
Just 10 years ago, a telephone booth in London was popular and was used for its intended purpose: from there you could not only make a call to talk in relative silence, but also wait out the London rain. Lately, according to complaints from Londoners, red telephone boxes have become a refuge in the evenings for young people who like to drink or do something worse.
British Telecom (BT) is the official owner of red telephone boxes throughout Britain: for a long time the company was a government company, but under the government of Margaret Thatcher it was privatized. Representatives of this company complain that even more money is spent on maintaining and cleaning the red booths than they actually bring in profit.
However, red telephone booths also have their defenders: those who want photos of telephone booths not to remain the only reminder of this interesting architectural project. Among them are the Lord Mayor of the City of London, as well as many historians and architects of Britain. Thanks to their efforts, currently about two and a half thousand red booths have been declared architectural monuments and are under state protection. But, unfortunately, in the age of high technology, apparently, only these security booths will be able to remain on the streets of London cities.
The telephone was invented in 1876 by Scotsman Alexander Bell and instantly gained worldwide fame. And only eight years later the world's first public telephones were installed in Great Britain. Now it is impossible to imagine the United Kingdom without the characteristic red telephone booths. They organically fit into the city architecture and the image of Great Britain in the world consciousness.
At first, telephones were installed at train stations, shops and hotels, where only a thin curtain separated the speaker from the public area. In addition to the noise that interferes with conversation and the abundance of people in these premises, the main disadvantage for the spread of the telephone was the limited operating time of public buildings. Soon this type of telephone arrangement was recognized as not very successful, and the government came up with the idea of creating a small specialized booth. Thus, residents of Great Britain became the first owners of street telephones, accessible at any time of the day or night.
And in order to make it easy for any visiting person to find a telephone, the British government decided to organize a large-scale competition among designers and architects of that time to determine the best unified telephone booth design.
The first telephone box design was the UK Post Office's K1 design, but it was not universally acclaimed. And in 1924, the design of the architect Giles Gilbert Scott, later known for such works as Christ Cathedral Church in Liverpool and the tower of the University Library of Cambridge, was chosen. These telephone booths have become a standard, but still have undergone minor modernization several times. Interestingly, in the original idea, the telephone booth was supposed to be made in silver and green-blue interior colors. For reasons of safety and better recognition on the city streets, the telephone kiosk was painted in the now classic red color.
The phone booth is designed in a neoclassical style: its monumental proportions with 18 glass panels won the hearts of the Royal Commission on Architecture and the Urban Environment. The top of such a booth is decorated with the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, but since 1955 telephone kiosks with a changed design began to appear in Scotland, where the Imperial Crown was replaced by the modern Crown of Scotland.
In the original version, the entire area of the booth was painted bright red, and from the early 90s it was decided to highlight the royal crown with gold paint. Now such types of telephone booths can be found throughout the United Kingdom and in cities of friendly countries and former colonies of Great Britain.
Now the red telephone booth is a full-fledged symbol of Great Britain, along with the double-decker bus and. The red telephone booth has inspired many designers and artists to create works of art throughout time.
In our time of highly developed accessible technologies, when people, young and old, have their own mobile phones; when even landline home telephones are half-forgotten, one can only remember the former significance and glory of red telephone booths. Therefore, in the fall of 2014, it was decided to convert telephone booths into solar-powered stations for recharging various mobile devices right on the street. And in connection with the new eco-purpose, the symbol of London will be repainted green. Well, this will certainly be a new page in the history of British urban design.
The iconic red telephone boxes, like double-decker buses, can be found throughout the UK. They gradually fall into disuse and decay, but thanks to the efforts of local communities and British Telecom, hundreds of them have been converted into libraries.
In 2002, there were 92 thousand such telephone booths in the UK. There are currently only 51,500 of them, with only 11,000 of the classic red ones. Over the past 20 years, the company has eliminated thousands of iconic booths across the country as people gradually switched to mobile communications and the Internet.
However, for many towns and villages, the telephone box is part of history and a symbol of the community's identity. These landmarks are an important part of the landscape and character of settlements throughout the country. People are used to booths and don’t want to see an empty space where they once stood. Numerous communities have lobbied for legislation to preserve the red booths because of their historical and aesthetic value. The British also had a similar attitude towards the legendary double decker buses, which are still used in some parts of the world.
To save phone booths that were in danger of being demolished, BT started a program called Adopt a Kiosk in 2009. The program allowed local communities and administrative departments to accept decommissioned telephone boxes in their areas for as little as 1? and turn them into unique museum-libraries. When BT receives a corresponding application, they simply dismantle the phone and leave the box in place. Since 2009, more than 1,500 booths have been taken over and converted into art galleries, tearooms, groceries, florists and, one of the most popular, libraries. The Community Heartbeat Trust even installed defibrillators in some of them. This way, you can even save someone's life before the medical team arrives.
Most of these libraries remain open source. Anyone can go in and pick up a book or DVD, but they must replace it with something else. This way the stock of books will always be full. All books, magazines and DVDs were donated by villagers. The most fantastic thing is how all the communities across the country have become involved and enthusiastically started to restore their historical heritage.
The red telephone box has been a symbol of British culture since the 1920s, and now communities have come up with an innovative new way to use it despite not having a telephone inside.
