RE-INHABITING CHELSEA – ANIA FOLEJEWSKA
Chelsea of today is a ghost-town. It is like an artif icial stage built for those rich enough who could owe some of its bits. It offers the lifestyle for rent – tiled fireplaces, old paintings in golden frames, ornaments carved into white walls Englishness that you can buy and try it on only if you are a Qatari prince or a Russian oligarch. Increasing prices emptied the flats and streets, the local food stores got replaced by the Chanel or Louis Vuitton boutiques and parks turned into fenced private gardens. This new surrealistic town is managed by the estate agents who Photoshoped its interiors, stuffing it with Louis XV chairs, swimming pools, 65 Inch Plasma televisions and sunshine glowing in each window. But yet if you go there for a walk in the evening, you can not hear a single dog burking, two neighbors drinking tea together, someone buying a bottle of milk in the off-license shop. The aim of this project is to re-imagine domestic space by introducing a new model of affordable home for one of the most expensive areas of London - Chelsea and Kensington. The financial recession which started in 2008 had a great impact on houses' prices and mortgages in the UK. Each year prices of flats in London increase, reaching in 2013 the average of £400,404 for a property. At the same time, getting a mortgage became almost an impossible goal, especially for young people with low incomes. We are the homeless generation which spends most of their earnings on increasingly expensive rooms' rents. We moved out from our parents' houses in order to recreate our own home-like environment in the rented shared rooms, bathrooms and kitchens. For us home is therefore much more the objects we owe, rather then solid walls and actual spaces. How does the domestic future of London look like and how will it influence its surrounding public sphere?