Work / 03

Canal Front Study

A study of a row of narrow canal houses at dusk, read the way the street was meant to be read, from across the water.

Narrow canal houses reflected in still water at sunset.

A canal house is narrow because frontage on the water was expensive. Each house makes the most of a few metres of facade, and the row only makes sense seen as a whole from the opposite bank. This study redraws one such row from a photograph. None of the houses are our work.

A row, not a set of houses

No two fronts match: gables, window heights and colours all change from one house to the next. Yet the row holds together, because every house keeps to roughly the same width and the same line along the water. The variety sits inside a very strict rule.

Read from the water

Still water doubles the row. In the reflection the gables and windows repeat upside down, and the facade becomes twice as tall. It is a reminder that a waterfront elevation is really designed for two views, one of them inverted.

What we took from it

When a street is made of many owners, set the plot width and the building line, and let everything else vary.

Narrow canal houses reflected in still water at sunset. — Fig. 1Canal houses at dusk, read from the opposite bank.

Narrow canal houses reflected in still water at sunset. — Fig. 2The reflection repeats every gable, window and change of colour.