Introduction
The Gibson Street Drawings are a self driven project to celebrate the independent businesses on this short stretch of street, recording the variety and energy of these enterprises, providing Woodlands and the surrounding area with goods and services, from bread to bicycles, magazines to mochas and lager to lunch.
The shops all inhabit Tenement Ground floors and show the variety in form and function of these flexible spaces, in which the architecture enhances and encourages life and commerce. ’The ability of a building to change is an element of the relevant stability of a neighbourhood. A vital neighbourhood changes, but more slowly than the individual buildings within it’1.
These drawings record in forensic detail the interiors of these places, capturing them as the backdrop and setting for the vibrant and varied commercial and communal life of the street.
1 Davis, Howard (2012), Living Over The Store – Architecture and Local Urban Life, London &93 New York, Routledge, p.93
