New RIBA and Create London commissions debut to boost social life in large East London housing development
A pair of new interventions commissioned for East London’s Becontree Estate have debuted this summer as an artistic effort to provide space for residents of the historic community that was at one time considered to be the largest social housing development in the western world. The first, spread across six locations on the 281-acre estate, uses furniture designed by artists Ivan Morison and Heather Peak in order to create “subtle” spaces for gathering and interaction in areas that had previously been overlooked or underutilized. They say their contribution was made using a “shared vocabulary of basic forms” (cone, cylinder, and slab), and have the simplicity of children’s toys with the equally playful title “Two Cannibals Eating a Clown.” Image © Thierry BalImage © Thierry Bal"We wanted to create sculptural forms that also offer rest and contemplation," Morison said. "We stack a cylinder on a cone and call it a table. We put a flat slab on a smaller slab and call it a bench. We put ...
A pair of new interventions commissioned for East London’s Becontree Estate have debuted this summer as an artistic effort to provide space for residents of the historic community that was at one time considered to be the largest social housing development in the western world.
The first, spread across six locations on the 281-acre estate, uses furniture designed by artists Ivan Morison and Heather Peak in order to create “subtle” spaces for gathering and interaction in areas that had previously been overlooked or underutilized. They say their contribution was made using a “shared vocabulary of basic forms” (cone, cylinder, and slab), and have the simplicity of children’s toys with the equally playful title “Two Cannibals Eating a Clown.”
"We wanted to create sculptural forms that also offer rest and contemplation," Morison said. "We stack a cylinder on a cone and call it a table. We put a flat slab on a smaller slab and call it a bench. We put ...
