In 2020 the ideal Open House venue is a) outdoors b) architect-led c) within walking distance of home d) low-key enough that fewer than six people will turn up e) Instagram-friendly. Welcome to Aberfeldy Street.
The Aberfeldy Estate is a large triangle of postwar housing in Poplar bounded on two sides by the A12 and A13, and on the hypotenuse by Bow Creek. Easily overlooked, it's one of the most deprived corners of Tower Hamlets and for years has had a dubious reputation. Unsurprisingly redevelopment is afoot. The local housing association is replacingits stock in partnership with a construction company, sequentially demolishing 300 residential units in order to build 1200 more. Phases 1 and 2 are pretty much complete, replacing the A13 flank with a wall of cappuccino-friendly apartments. Aberfeldy Street will be phase 4.
It might seem strange to paint a high street pretty colours shortly before you knock it down, but there is method to the madness. Aberfeldy Street has long been somewhat drab, a brief shopping parade to satisfy the needs of local residents, peaking with a Londis supermarket, a chicken shop and a pub. What it couldn't do is satisfy the aspirations of moneyed incomers, so the plan has been to brighten up the fronts of 26 retail units and refurbish a few to boost the attractiveness of the area. The whole thing's been funded for less than the market price of a single apartment, and created over a few months by a team of architects engaging with the existing community. And it looks cracking.
The design concept references a Bangladeshi tradition of recycling garments, with each individual facade based on a different swatch of fabric. Most of these fabrics were sourced by members of the community, while others were lifted direct from the architect's wardrobe. Once scanned and processed this created a diverse patchwork to be applied to the fronts of the shops and the flats above them, the biggest decision being which design to place where. Over 800 litres of paint were used, in 200 different colours, with the entire street-sized mural applied in approximately six weeks. You can see lots of close-up images (and watch a fly-through video) here.
The end result looks anything but traditional, perhaps more Mediterranean or even Latin American, as the two brightly painted parades face off against each other. Walls, balconies and shutters combine to create a riot of colour, aided and abetted if the sun happens to be shining on one or other side of the street.
The supermarket now looks cheery, the tailor's shop bright and welcoming, and the Chinese takeaway requires a double take. The chemist has scrubbed up well, the mosque has a particularly colourful pattern which helps it stand out, and even the dusty old workshop rented by the old bloke who should have retired by now has a delightfully individual frontage. The Tommy Flowers pub was already a shade of dazzling blue, with its mural of the bespectacled computingpioneer who grew up two streets away painted down one side, it's just that the rest of the street has now surpassed it.
And yet.
Spending some time in Aberfeldy Street on a Saturday afternoon it was fascinating to see who wasn't here. The Bangladeshi grocers was busy, but only with people walking over from the undeveloped side of the estate. The punters gassing outside the pub included a late middle-aged couple so blunt that if they appeared on EastEnders you'd assume they were caricatures. Barely a single vehicle drove down the street in the course of half an hour, other than the lowly 309 bus squeezing its way through without stopping. The barber took a break from a loud conversation with two mates to head inside and shave a customer. A couple of teenagers walked up the street clutching the obligatory box of chicken. But of the residents of the new development around the corner I saw not a sign.
Aberfeldy Street barely gets a mention in the marketing brochure written to attract Nespresso-friendly professional couples to this corner of E14. The gym gets a double page spread, as does the 24/7 concierge, plus the promise of an on-site deli "for daily essentials and organic groceries". Londis definitely won't cut it for residents being nudged towards "Canary Wharf for Marks & Spencer Simply Food and Waitrose", or urged to "head into the West End for shopping and champagne afternoon tea." If the newly-repainted high street makes it into the next iteration of the publication it'll only be because it looks pretty, not because it's aspirational... it doesn't even boast a cafe where you could pick up a decent cup of coffee.
The repaint of Aberfeldy Street, glorious though it is, is only a temporary 'meanwhile' project with a lifespan of maybe five years. The next phase of the estate's redevelopment will be to build a new retail area, slightly to the south, after which the existing parade of shops can be safely demolished. Whether the existing traders of Aberfeldy Street, many of whom currently benefit from paying low or no rent, will be able to transfer across remains to be seen. Looking at the artist's impression, with bland units buried beneath stacks of brick balconies, I have my doubts.
At present, even in its rainbow state, Aberfeldy Street is serving traditional estate residents rather than the incomers. The danger is that the next retail hub will serve mainly the new lot, having been shifted onto their turf, with a consequent focus on hospitality fripperies rather than affordable services. The hope must be that the brightly repainted street proves so popular that nobody can bear to see it die.
