Earlier this month, The Modern House team had the pleasure of Benedict O’Looney’s company. For a full three hours, the architect, historian and former punk musician stood at the prow of a riverboat in the Thames and narrated the rich, complex history of the buildings that have risen on the banks of the capital’s river.

Benny, as he is known to his friends, conducts tours along the river for Open City – an educational charity that empowers communities to learn about, experience and have a role in shaping the places where they live. He also runs his own architectural practice in Peckham, where he has redeveloped some of the areas most treasured buildings, including Peckham Rye Station, the Jones & Higgins clock tower, Choumert Grove mosque and Khan’s Bargain. (To quote The Peckham Peculiar, “Few have done as much to ensure that Peckham’s architecture retains a link to its rich and fascinating past as he has.”) Somehow, he also finds time to teach, chair Southwark’s Conservation Areas Advisory Group and support the work of both The Victorian Society and The Peckham Society.

Our outing begins at Crown Pier on the Victoria Embankment. The boat wends its way upriver, stopping at Benny’s behest to take in the landmark buildings that form the outline of London’s mercurial skyline. From the top deck, we take in the big hitters, but the histories Benny narrates are never hackneyed. Instead, Benny encourages his audience to pick up on the details: how the stonework of the Palace of Westminster has been patched up over the years; how the cerulean circumference of Big Ben would have chimed with the brightly painted ironwork across Victorian London.

Deftly moving from micro to macro, Benny narrates the evolution of London’s architectural styles. We see the appearance of the International Style in the Millbank Tower (1963); Terry Farrell’s postmodern SIS Building (1994) and the contemporary curves of The Corniche (2019) by Foster and Partners. Bridges, monuments, sculptures – even the capital’s new super sewer – are all given the Benny treatment.

Domestic architecture is also celebrated. We pass Whitehall Court in Westminster – the first mansion block to appear in the capital in 1884. Further on, we notice how the formulaic façades of Thomas Cubbitt’s Pimlico terraces slowly evolve into the expressive Arts and Crafts flourishes exemplified in Richard Norman Shaw’s Swan House of the 1870s – a favourite of Benny’s. We don’t dwell on Broadway Malyan’s winged, glass behemoth, St George Wharf.

Dates, names and architectural details are recalled and invoked with an infectious gusto that – in this office at least – has spawned the hashtag: #bennyforlife. In fact, when Benny momentarily left his post, we were literally and figuratively unmoored, bereft of his enriching narrative.

We disembarked with a list of our favourite adjectives that may or may not find their way into our summer listings: “pukka example” was a firm favourite, as was “delicious”, “mighty”, and “socking great” – all words that aptly describe both the day, and the lunch enjoyed on the terrace of the NT once we had recovered our land legs …