The London red phone box is such a cultural icon that tourists queue up to be pictured alongside the ones in Parliament Square. They might instead hop on the Bakerloo to Maida Vale, where they'll find not only London's most ornate Tube roundel, but also the city's tallest phone kiosk.
The distended booth sits outside 7 Hall Road, a little south-east of Maida Vale Tube. It's designed by Philippe Starck, most famous for his War-of-the-Worlds-style lemon squeezer.
No juice in this phone booth; it's a work of art, and not connected to the network. The piece was commissioned to stand outside a block of flats, built into an old telephone exchange. Starck created the kiosk by joining together two old K6 phone boxes.
The work is freely accessible, allowing us to peer inside. The interior is decorated in the manner of the original K6s, which were first unveiled to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of George V in 1935. A mirror, lamp and old-style telephone are representative of the time.
It makes you wonder, how tall could phone boxes actually go? Could a super-elongated kiosk, say eight-times normal height, serve as an eye-pleasing mobile phone mast? Could we design a whole building to resemble a multi-storey phone box? When you have a design classic like the K6, why not make the most of it?
