This was designed as a small cinema and art gallery for the Film Makers Co-operative and London Electronic Arts in a trendy location within then ‘up and coming’ Hoxton. Contrived to look as if the accommodation is in two separate buildings, the blue, composite brick/concrete structure (which is a composite of both precast and in-situ concrete) has an intentional heavy, industrial quality whilst the large windows promote a continuous ‘dialogue’ between interior and exterior. It is worth a visit if, as a contrast to the manifestations of global capitalism at the heart of the City, you are prowling peripheral areas in search of authenticity. However, the cinema went bust in 2002 and the place now has other uses.
Purely coincidentally, compare the Lux building with this late C18th Georgian house in Nelson Square, SE1 (near the Palestra building) — it has more glass than brickwork, but without the concrete behind.
Another new project in this area —just being completed at the time of writing — is Fairmule House, by Quay2c architects (Waterson Street, E2; Tube: Old Street). It introduces London to a form of large, solid timber structural panels that have long been common in Germany. But this is pre-fab from Po-Mo architects of the Venturi mold crossed with latter-day predelictions for narrative, picking up on facts such as an adjacent spilll-over graveyard where Thomas Fairchild is buried. (He who crossed a Sweet William with a Carnation to produce an artefactual hybrid called the ‘Fairchild Mule’.) The architects handle all this with some wit, insinuating ‘Mule’ motifs and even managing to stretch the gardening references to the rationale given for selecting the timber structure. A mix of double and single-bed, double-aspect apartments are provided, together with seven business units. The artist involved Julia Manheim.