Ice House Court Studios, completed prior to occupation. Photo Tim Crocker

The production of art has been present in our work since we started the practice nearly 8 years ago. One of our first projects was the studio of photographer Ori Gersht and painter Nogah Engler, which was for us a seminal work not only in terms of establishing some of the key principles that remain fundamental in our design approach until now, but it also marked the start of a body of work in the realm of arts and culture that has evolved into a wide range of projects, from collaborations with artists to exhibition design and gallery spaces. This was a natural consequence of the strong affinity we feel towards the process of artistic production, particularly when it comes to art from the 1960’s onwards when the ideas became as important as the making and production moved away from the artist, which brought it closer to the process of making architecture. Like some forms of art, our work often emerges from an idea of how the space or building will be experienced, and this idea ends up articulating everything from the organisation of the plan to the approach to detailing.  

What distinguishes these projects is that the design process is intensely personal because of the obvious particularities of each artist’s process and spatial requirements. The studio is widely perceived as a place for secluded creation, but it is also a practical space: a workshop, a show room, a salon for entertainment, but in the end, is intrinsic to the individual’s character and work.  In that sense, it is more akin to designing a house than a work space, with the added intricacy of being for clients that are versed in creative expression.  Having a creative client often results in a rich interchange of ideas that with some luck translates into equally rich finished project. Specially designed studios however are usually commissioned by artists with a consolidated practice and who crucially, can afford it. Most artists are not in this privileged position so finding a studio space that is either free or very cheap is the norm. After initially carving out a space at home, the next step is moving into an area where rents are low, and to find other people in a similar situation and share the running costs with. From the second half of the XX century this has meant a place on the fringes of affluent neighbourhoods, often within a declining industrial district where affordable spaces are readily available. The image of the budding artist working in a disused industrial warehouse has become synonymous with artistic creativity, but looking beyond the cliché can reveal insights into how the type of workspace and its location has influenced not only artistic practice spawning whole art movements (see Minimalism and Pop Art), but also help explain how some cities have evolved over time.

Having a creative client often results in a rich interchange of ideas that with some luck translates into equally rich finished project. 

The presence of artist studios in an area is widely associated with the advent of gentrification as recent urban history attests, which places their emergence at the midst of this highly contested topic. Ever since the take-over of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1970’s, the consequences of the subsequent market driven development such as the displacement of the urban poor, are becoming increasingly evident and sadly poignant. The same process has happened in other cities including London, due to a combination of factors but most importantly, a public policy that enables this to happen in the first place. It would be unfair to place the onus on the artists for the shortcomings of urban development and one of the common misconceptions is that they are mostly individualistic types, with little or no interest in community life, who are loosely tied to a place, which makes them both easy to remove in the first place and a target audience for the re-packaged ‘cultural’ experience offered by private developers once the process of gentrification is complete. The reality is always more complex and there are numerous artist-run social enterprises that have emerged long before the current co-working hype, to create and manage studio spaces. What started as a means to make affordable spaces available to more people, has evolved into a rich variety of models, some of them deeply rooted in the community where they are based, making them an effective mechanism to neutralize the conditions that enable unequal development.

In 2011, we started working with Bow Arts, one of such organisations formed more than 20 years ago and that is now one of the largest providers of affordable studio spaces in London. Their model is simple: they find a large disused building, secure a short to medium term lease for a very low or no rent, fit it out and offer it significantly below market rates. Their first site was in a former nunnery building on Bow Road, East London, in what used to be the crossing point of the River Lea before London turned into Essex. This quickly expanded to take over three adjacent buildings with a central courtyard housing a total of 110 studio spaces, a gallery and a café. But like the buildings themselves, the Bow Arts model branched into other areas such as public art commissioning and education programmes with local primary and secondary schools that now form part of their core activities, and have anchored the organisation firmly in the area. Not only that, through a combination of financing and well-co-ordinated funding activities, they have secured a steady stream of income on top of rents for investment in the buildings demonstrating that, albeit at a modest scale, a market-driven model is not the only way to develop a city.
The truth is that people footfall doesn’t magically appear, particularly in places where there is little to do, and activity needs to be generated through a varied programme of uses other than shopping.

After being involved in the redevelopment of the Bow Road complex by establishing a masterplan for the next 10 years through a sequence of architectural interventions, we have been recently working on a new fit-out model that is a progression of Bow Art’s typical studio toolkit. The innovation however, comes not only from the design of the system itself: a Michael-Asher-inspired framework of open partitions made of deep profiles of stained timber, but also from the fact that is being deployed within the ground floor areas of new residential schemes as opposed to disused spaces. With one of the major myths of regeneration schemes now widely dispelled, the so called ‘mixed-use’ building, both developers and local Councils are finally waking up to the realisation that it is not enough to just provide generic retail space at ground floor to ‘activate’ a street frontage. The truth is that people footfall doesn’t magically appear, particularly in places where there is little to do, and activity needs to be generated through a varied programme of uses other than shopping. With one of these projects with Bow Arts (in partnership with Barking and Dagenham Council and the GLA) now complete and fully occupied, and another one being built at Royal Albert Wharf in the Royal Docks for Notting Hill Housing, there are clear signs of growing interest in providing well-managed spaces with medium to long term programmes for arts and culture from the outset, which is shaping up to be a plausible antidote to the tokenistic approach that has been characteristic of regeneration schemes across the country. Time will tell.

Ice House Court Studios in Barking has been shortlisted for the New London Architecture Awards in the Workspace category, and the R.A.W. (Royal Albert Wharf) Studios will officially open later this month with a series of events and talks as part of the London Festival of Architecture 2017.