Open House-warming: Hackney’s architectural wonders throw open their doors to the public

Wooden goodness: A timber building on Whitmore Road. Photograph: Waugh Thistleton

Open House is returning to the capital this month, providing the opportunity to look inside some of East London’s hidden gems.

The annual celebration of architecture started back in 1992 with the aim of providing Londoners with a means of stepping inside all the buildings that surround them but which they are rarely allowed to enter, and every year has seen the festival grow.

Over 750 buildings and sites in London will become accessible over the course of the weekend (17 and 18 September).

In Hackney there are 42 venues opening their doors, including homes, cinemas, theatres, new churches such as the Frampton Park Baptist Church, Woodberry Wetlands nature reserve as well as some unusual avant-garde buildings.

Tim-ber!

Wood is fast taking over from steel and concrete as the progressive architect’s go-to material.

So says East London architect Andrew Waugh, who has spoken of the need to embrace “the “timber age”, with new engineered timber now allowing architects to build bigger and more ambitious buildings.

On the Saturday morning Waugh will be leading a walking tour of the Hackney’s timber buildings.

Waugh’s architecture firm Waugh Thistleton is responsible for three “massive timber” buildings that are among the world’s most significant (and conveniently within easy walking distance of each other).

They include the nine-storey Murray Grove building which, when completed in 2009, was thought to be the world’s tallest modern timber residential building.

Concrete spiral

For those still interested in concrete, however, one of the more left-field contemporary buildings open for the weekend is Vex, on Maury Road in Stoke Newington.

The spiral-shaped house is a collaboration between architecture practice Chance De Silva and the composer Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner).

The inspiration for the building was the compostion ‘Vexations’ by Erik Satie.

The loop of repetitive piano music (which lasts around 28 hours in continuous performance) was the starting point for a three-storey curved, concrete-fluted house, which seems especially atypical in the Victorian Northwold and Cazenove conservation area.

Architect Stephen Chance has likened the concrete spiral house to “a round peg in a square hole”, and the architect will be on site over the weekend to give interested members of the public the lowdown on the project.

Accessibility all areas

Disabled-led theatre company Graeae is certainly worth visiting, their headquarters on Kingsland Road being one of the only fully-accessible rehearsal, office and work-spaces in the UK.

In 2009 Graeae founded their home in Bradbury Studios – an early 20th century Grade II-listed building that had served as a stables for the North Metropolitan Tramways.

The design was led by thinking about the multiple senses that people use when they move through a space, and many of their fixtures are recycled.

Open House is also a good opportunity to find out more about some of the borough’s well-known buildings. On the Sunday, there will be a series of events at the 18th-century built Clissold House in Stoke Newington.

As well as guided tours led by members of Clissold Park Users Group, the park’s historian will be presenting the Beck Collection – a recently discovered trove of information about the 1880s public campaign that saved Clissold Park from being built over.

For full Open House listings see: listings.openhouselondon.org.uk