The Passage to the Control-room at South West Regional Headquarters, Bristol

Piper was commissioned in April 1940 to undertake ' a series of pictures of Air Raid Precaution control rooms' He was taken in great secrecy to see the ARP headquarters in Bristol. The strange lighting, graphics and colours created a modernist, almost brutal space which bore some affinity to the theatrical sets Piper had been designing before the war. Piper increases their abstract qualities by breaking down perspective but retains an eye for their functional importance. The paintings were exhibited at the National Gallery in July 1940 in an exhibition of British War Artists.