Architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris have been busy along Whitechapel Road recently because not only is Tower Hamlets Town Hall one of theirs, so is this. It's located immediately opposite the Whitechapel Gallery and is a repurposing of the former Cass School of Art and Architecture into a modern office block. The overall idea behind the rebuild was to imagine inverting the original six-storey building and plonking it on top as a kind of structural reflection, and then adding an unusual banded artwork around the middle. I didn't get a decent photo of the exterior because of awkwardly placed sunshine so you might want to look at the project page for that, but stay with me for a tour of the interior guided by the actual architect. "I wouldn't have called it The Rowe", he said.
The enormous loopy sculpture hanging in reception reflects the textile businesses over there in Spitalfields, you can actually sit in this one, no really lots of people have, we made sure it was strong enough. The lifts are all colour co-ordinated, it adds some visual character to each floor. Look at these surfaces, everything's quite pared back in here. The building used to have a central atrium but we had to fill that in with a supportive core to make sure our 6th floor intervention worked. I hope this door opens, yes, come out and take a look at it. This terrace goes all round the building, it's a kind of dividing line. We're particularly proud of the enamel artwork that snakes round the entire ceiling, it was designed by Yinka Ilori and created on the Isle of Wight by the same company that makes tube roundels.
This outside terrace on the 11th floor has great views, I hope it's unlocked, yes come and take a look across Spitalfields and the East End. Tower Hamlets wouldn't let us build too high, we had to be a stepping stone from the Aldgate cluster down to the conservation area round Altab Ali Park. The roof terrace is amazing and everyone in the building will have access to it. This side has a greenish pergola, that side has a long green wall and the rear has a gathering space where you could come and do yoga first thing in the morning. We tried to make the glass as unobtrusive as we could. That circular skylight above the lift lobby is called an oculus. And although it's been on the market for months no company's yet agreed to hire it out, but yes a client is in talks so you picked a really good moment to enjoy a look inside.
At the top of Vanbrugh Hill, just east of Greenwich Park, the trio of architects brought in to create a postwar council estate had an impeccable pedigree. They were Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, the practice who also designed the Golden Lane Estate (before) and the Barbican complex (after). What they came up with here was a unique mix of houses, maisonettes and flats which ultimately appealed so sufficiently that some of the original residents are still in situ. For Open House four residents welcomed visitors into their homes, or at least I think it was four because it was more a game of 'spot the green bunting' which across a seven acre site soon got a bit tiresome. I managed two.
Garages were still important in the 1950s so they built three rows and then dropped a chain of two-bedroom maisonettes along the top. These are really airy and light, like living off a conservatory, thanks to some well-positioned skylights. The second bedroom wasn't especially enormous, or maybe that's because in the 'show flat' I saw it was kitted out as an office. The owner clearly loved living here because he had assorted historical paraphernalia lying around (you can see similar and better on the estate's website, and maybe get a little jealous).
Over in the single tower block, called Westcombe Court, it was a very different affair. The flat's owners were midway through a total refit which appeared to involve ripping out everything that wasn't a load-bearing pillar and repurposing the (fairly minimal) space to their own preferred floorplan. Sheets and cables were everywhere, the tabletop was covered in potential tile samples and the only area that was even approximately finished was the bathroom (because priorities). They also recommended we go see the view from the seventh floor before we left, which I'm not sure the uppermost residents appreciated but wow, Kidbrooke poked up one way and Docklands shone the other. While the lifts still work, what a place to live.
Thamesmead's iconic Southmere Lake - the 'Flatblock Marina' - has been the setting for such cinematographic delights as A Clockwork Orange, Beautiful Thing and the C4 series Misfits. Much of the surrounding housing has since been demolished and replaced with something any location scout would ignore, but the community centre/bar/social club on the northern bank survives intact. It has however been repurposed as creative studios under the Bow Arts umbrella, because my local arts hub insists on spreading its regenerative fingers almost everywhere. And on Saturday they held their annual Open Studios event so I finally got to go inside the concrete bunker where Sandra pulled pints and Curtis rewound time, and stood properly on top of it too.
It's a very Bow Arts kind of building, in that the interior is a bewildering warren of small studios where artists of all types create tapestries, paintings, carnival costumes, collages, sculptures, whatever. My favourite was Gary Drostle's mosaic studio on the ground floor, one of the larger spaces, where several beautiful mini-tiled commissions were mid-creation. If you live near North Walsham look out for a multi-coloured swooshy number coming to the marketplace before the end of the year. Elsewhere Amanda Eatwell was thrilled to get an audience for her photos, the cafe was being used as a sparse exhibition space and several artists had bunked off early for a beer and/or hot dog in the courtyard.
The architects who enabled the transformation also accented the building with a series of structuralinterventions in a signature bright orange colour, very much the shade of a Misfits jumpsuit. These add a visual frisson to Lakeside's lakeside terraces, and seem to have generally avoided the goose droppings that plague much of the water's edge. Yes it's a bit sad that it isn't a community centre any more, more somewhere that only some of the community use, especially given the new Peabody replacement is a soulless pile on the opposite site of the water. But it is still here and no longer derelictly empty, so hurrah for open spaces, Open Studios and Open House.
Sorry, I've finished all three of my write-ups today, so if you've got used to coming back during the day and finding something extra to read that won't be happening, plus that's my Open House reportage finished for another year so if you wanted to hear more about the nine locations I never wrote up that won't be happening either, they weren't interesting enough, plus my album on Flickr has somehow reached a full complement of 90 photos, and tomorrow I have to find something else to write about again.
