Ayesha S. Ghosh
Ayesha S. Ghosh is a contributor to the Brooklyn Rail.
Tei Carpenter is a New York City-based architect and practitioner, trained in philosophy and design. She is the founder and director of Agency—Agency, a studio specializing in cultural, residential, civic, and public projects at multiple scales. She has lectured internationally and taught at a number of institutions.
On a quiet block in Barking, East London stands the charming structure: A House for Artists. At first glance it is grounded in its site: visually related to the buildings around it through its height and gray materiality. As the eye tracks upward from street level, light-hearted geometric punch-outs and triangular projections appear. Completed in 2022 by Apparata architects, this plain but playful building points the way toward social housing that can live up to the ideal.
There is a lumbering force moving its way through architecture. The last fifteen years have seen a growth in the number of collective practices, filling in the spaces between institutions that are unresponsive to conflict and difficulty.