Cultural interpretations of community, proximity, and privacy; urban conditions of density, heterogeneity, and infill – these are some of the central themes explored in the exhibition. Stephen Taylor and Ryue Nishizawa have addressed such themes with projects that engage and in some cases challenge the specific circumstances of London and Tokyo.

Here is Stephen Taylor’s description of Three Small Houses on Chance Street (2005):

This project for three houses occupies a small infill site in Bethnal Green, a neighbourhood in London’s East End. In the eighteenth century, this was one of the densest and poorest parts of the East End, characterized by workers’ cottages occupying overcrowded urban neighbourhoods. The subsequent century has seen the urban grain of this part of London eroded. The East End’s ensuing physical transformation has produced a more fragmented urban fabric with reduced densities and a dispersed population. A comparison of the 1901 and 2001 census shows a decrease in population of 66 percent.

Seen as an instance of urban repair, the project acknowledges and celebrates the “patchwork city” to which it belongs, its brick facade supplying the missing piece in the block of which it is a part. Cognizant of the eighteenth-century small London house typology that once occupied the site and the level of urban intensification that came with them, themes of compact city dwellings are explored through the design of these houses. Flat-fronted and abutting their adjacent neighbours, these dwellings lie firmly in support of the “street” and continue to define its hard-edged, intimate character.

Image: Three Small Houses on Chance Street, London, 2007. Stephen Taylor, architect. Ioana Marinescu, photographer. © Ioana Marinescu.