Words Charlie Monaghan
Photography Elliot Sheppard

Designer James Shaw is best known for his objects and furniture made from extruded waste plastic. Transforming something problematic into fun, contemporary forms, they showcase the material’s malleable qualities. His latest project, a self-build house, is grander in scale but similarly tackles a challenging proposition with wit, humour and a focus on the inherent beauty of materials. This story first appeared in Issue No.6 of The Modern House Magazine – if you haven’t already, be sure to pick up your copy here.

In a conservation area near Bethnal Green, there are 350 houses built in the 1860s. Unlike much of their environs, the streets are a portal into an East End of the imagination: neat rows of uniform, butterfly-roofed, two-storey dwellings constructed in yellow brick. Tower Hamlets council mentions the “homogeneous layout of London Victorian terraces” as being the defining contributor to the area’s character. It is pretty, quaint and not a place you would imagine finding an experimental upside-down sunken house built by a young designer interested in challenging conventional notions of beauty.

But that is exactly what presents itself at the recently completed home of James Shaw, who, on the day of my visit, I luckily spot elevated above the site’s discreet street-facing façade, tinkering on a ladder. “Because of the conservation area, one of the planning stipulations was that the house had to be invisible from the street,” James explains, now off the ladder and giving me the tour. He came across the plot while out running five years ago, when he was renting nearby. A year of hard negotiating later, he secured the site and has spent the remaining time building the house himself, with the exception of structural work and some tiling.

A few things guided the design, which James collaborated on with his friend, architect Nicholas Ashby. There were the planning conditions, which stated the house could only be 2.7m at street level. Then there were the realities of buying a one-time yard of a corner pub on a densely populated street: seven adjoining neighbours on four sides. “The party wall agreements were really, really tricky,” says James. The solution – in addition to a charm offensive that included “lots of cups of tea with the neighbours” – was to go down to create a sunken house comprising 60sq m of living space across two floors. There’s a bedroom upstairs; everything else is below, out of sight.

Going down brought with it another consideration: light, or the potential lack of. Maximising it became key. Past the street façade, you are welcomed into a paved courtyard where two glass-fronted elevations sit perpendicular to each other below a flat roof. On a bright day in late winter, it is just warm enough to imagine how lovely sliding all the glass open would be. Views into the bedroom extend through to another sliding glass window, which opens on to a rear lightwell spanning the full height of the structure. The well feeds light down to the lower floor, where there is an outdoor area complete with a plunge pool. A would-be dingy basement is not only as light as it could be, but, under James’s hand, a moment of whimsical fun.

In fact, making the most of what’s available are hallmarks of James’s work, the best known of which is ‘Plastic Baroque’, a series of items ranging from candlesticks to drinks trolleys and chairs made from gloopy logs of extruded waste plastic. “When I came out of uni and didn’t have any money, I could get 200kg of plastic for free. Part of the work just came out of that abundance – and that abundance comes with us being silly with a really valuable resource,” James told us when we made a film about his process in 2022. Bespoke plastic creations are incorporated throughout the house, like the pastel blue banister that runs up the staircase (also bespoke), lending a surprisingly tactile, handmade counterpoint to the exposed breezeblocks and concrete walls.

Nothing expresses that in a more idiosyncratic fashion than the bathroom. Among tile renditions of Anni Albers-inspired patterns, James has made a mosaic depicting Lou’s cat, Rupert – a set-in-stone expression of a shared life. “Because it’s taken so long, my life’s changed shape a lot since. I was single at the very end of my twenties when I found the site, and now it’s finished and we’re excited to be living in it together. Having got to know the neighbourhood and all the people around, it would be nice to stay here for a little while.” Would he do another self-build? “I want to say no, but, somehow simultaneously, I can also feel an itch. Maybe I could do another project like this again. I don’t know.” That feels like a yes to me, but, for now, James can rest in the knowledge he’s pulled off an addition to this area that is wonderfully inhomogeneous but every bit as characterful as its neighbours.