Urban space: Venus, as the house is called, has become a landmark
Photograph: Dennis Gilbert
Two people live in a London street. They decide to build another house there - a tiny house, but a distinctly radical one, influenced by Japanese architecture - and they call it Venus. Now, they are wondering what to do with it. Move there themselves? Rent it out? For now, it's functioning as a contemporary art gallery but, best of all, it's a local landmark. A mysterious, copper-cowled building that bookends the street. You just don't get homes like this in north London.
Not in this bit of north London, anyway. It isn't Islington N1, it isn't Crouch End, it isn't Highgate, it isn't Highbury, though all these fashionable and expensive places are close. Instead, Venus hangs out on the wrong side of the Arsenal football ground, London N5, close to railway yards and fringe industries. It's a good, cheap, friendly street with standard 1870s two-storey terraced houses in it.
You may be wondering why this admittedly lovely and curvaceous house has the unlikely name of Venus. It turns out to be simply a hangover from the name of the previous occupant of the site, a rickety rag-trade sweatshop called Venus Garments. The original Venus was painted bright red and stuck on the end of the terrace in one of those leftover spaces where the Victorians couldn't fit a standard house.
When the owners sold up, local architects Stephen Chance and Wendy de Silva saw their opportunity. Since they already lived a few doors down the street, they hardly needed a home there - particularly one as tiny as this was likely to turn out. But they built it nonetheless, and the street is a lot better for it.
It's likely that the planners would never have countenanced a house as unorthodox as this on any standard plot. But the old sweatshop had established a precedent by standing right on the street, rather than sitting back behind a front garden like its neighbours. It had also had its highly coloured first floor, perched above a brick ground floor. Chance and de Silva offered the planners a new building which played some of the same tricks for different ends. The planners grumbled mightily but, in the end, consented. Good for them: it must have seemed a risky decision, but it has been vindicated.
