Artist Tracey Emin, and her architect David Chipperfield, have pulled the plug on an appeal over a controversial project involving plans for demolition of a locally-listed block of 1920s council flats on Bell Lane, in London’s Spitalfields, to provide Emin with her four-storey house.
However while the council then agreed the scheme had ‘considerable architectural merit’ it rejected it on the grounds it would harm the local conservation area, concluding that it was ‘not exceptional enough to overcome the loss of the existing building’ which had ‘both historic significance and aesthetic and townscape merit’.
Heritage bodies including SAVE Britain’s Heritage, the Spitalfields Trust and the Twentieth Century Society, preparing to take part in the inquiry, welcomed the decision to ditch the plans.
Director of SAVE Britain’s Heritage, Henrietta Billings, said: ‘Great care was taken to design this delightful, modest [existing] building on Bell Lane to blend with the traditional scale of the narrow streets around it. Just a few hundred metres away from the office towers of the City, the historic streets in this area buzz with life thanks to their human scale – in spite of intense development pressures. We are delighted that the building has been reprieved.’
For more background see UK Construction online
