[Jimmy]

Visited by myself and later on with Gone.

Chips is a nine-storey block consisting of 142 one, two and three-bedroom flats designed by Alsop Architects. Fuelled by Alsop’s customary energy, Chips makes a good flagship. It is a big building, 100m long and 14m wide, comparable to the Victorian industrial structures that survive in this area. Giant silk-screened lettering, honouring the names of the region’s canals, is equal to the scale of the site, as is the bold division of the nine floors into bands of three, in yellowish, purplish and reddish hues. Shallow wiggles in each layer, misaligning with each other, animate the block. The middle band of the horizontal tricoleur, or ‘layer cake’, is the darkest of the three, and projects at each end into 9m cantilevers in a deliberate attempt to create a sense of heaviness, offset by jittering window rhythms and colourful recesses for balconies.



Views from the lower roof;





Views from the main roof;















Cheers for Looking.