Ariel House, 74a Charlotte Street, W1

Ariel House is the “post-modernist gas chamber” where Johnny (David Thewlis) speculates on increasingly paranoid philosophical concepts with the obsessive security guard (Peter Wight) in Mike Leigh’s Naked. Behind the block is the flat of lonely Deborah MacLaren, where Thewlis pops over for a bout of sex.

Charlotte Street is overshadowed by the gawky pillar of the 1960s Telecom Tower, its revolving restaurant off-limits to the public since a bomb blast damaged the tower in the early seventies. The tower came close to being wrecked years earlier, by northerners Brenda and Yvonne (Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham) during the wild party which climaxed sixties slapstick comedy Smashing Time. At the end of the movie, the pair trudge glumly down Charlotte Street after their dreams of fame turn pear-shaped.

Naked (1993, dir: Mike Leigh)
Smashing Time (1967, dir: Desmond Davis)