Cyndi Himmelstiere investigates the borough’s single defining architectural personality trait
I set out on a modest Tuesday afternoon to walk a single street in Shoreditch and simply count exposed brick walls, purely out of curiosity. I stopped counting at forty, not because I finished the street, but because I began to suspect I was losing my grip on reality.
A Design Language, Unified
Every cafe, co-working space, and craft beer bar within a hundred metres appeared to share a single interior designer, or possibly a single collective hallucination, involving Edison bulbs, reclaimed scaffold boards, and brick left deliberately, aggressively unplastered.
One cafe owner, when I asked why, told me with total sincerity that the exposed brick “tells a story about the building’s history,” which is a lot of narrative weight to place on what used to simply be a wall holding up a roof.
An Aesthetic With No Escape
Even the newer developments, built well after any actual industrial history, now feature fake exposed brick, applied deliberately, as though the neighbourhood has become allergic to the idea of a smooth, plastered wall existing anywhere within its boundaries.
The London Prat covered the wider East London design monoculture last year, and reading it back now feels less like journalism and more like a diagnosis.
Londonist has its own running commentary on Shoreditch’s aesthetic sameness, which I now read with the specific recognition of someone who has personally counted the bricks.
I have decided to stop counting. For my own sake, and possibly the sake of the next unsuspecting cafe owner I interview.
More from me: Cyndi Himmelstiere, prat.uk. Further reading: Londonist.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
