REVISITING THE IDEA STORES

摘要

Walking down Whitechapel High Street, you have enough to do in dodging the stallholders and shoppers in one of the capital's busiest street markets. The market crowd reflects the density of inhabitation in the surrounding streets; generations - largely Bangladeshi - crammed together into subdivided terraced houses and council flats. This density continues for miles to the east, and it hardly needs mentioning that it comes with severe deprivation - a New Labour term that, with 'social exclusion and it's cousin 'social mobility', attempted to refocus the poverty debate. The architecture along the way recalls previous eras of civic building in an area that has always been marked by social ills. Watney Street Market and the Lansbury Estate are just two of the early welfare state projects whose quality can still be sensed, despite years of neglect. Passmore Edwards Libraries, the name proudly inscribed on their terracotta frontages, are epitaphs to the improving philanthropic ideals of the Victorian age.