2. Raven Row
6a Architects' refurbished gallery
London E1
At Raven Row you can feel layers of history co-existing together; an 18th century silk mercer’s house, a 1970s concrete framed office building brought together with a new sunken gallery space. Whilst the 18th century interior ripples with mouldings, scalloped cornices and wood panelling, the extension is crisp, sharply detailed and unadorned. Historical textures are re-rendered in a make up of plaster and white paint, occasionally interrupted by deeply blackened echoes of the past – the charred timber roof lights that references the fire that took place in 1972, or the interior of a used fireplace. Tactile ironmongery and handrails retain the sandy texture of the molds from which they were cast. The galleries are calm, spaces of a domestic scale and feel a world away from the busy Spitalfield streets outside.