Bookshop in a Greenhouse

The Wapping Project is a humming, clinking, mesmerising space. The weathered brickwork, motorised cogs and ceramic tiles are remnants from its days as a hydraulic power station. These mossy walls have a history.

Jules Wright, the director of The Wapping Project, acquired the building in 1993. The purchase firmly placed the Wapping Project on the map, transforming the derelict space into a contemporary art centre and restaurant too with machinery whirring next to coffee cups and bowls of homemade soup.

This autumn, Wright has opened a bookshop. This is not any old bookshop. This shop is set in a tiny glasshouse in the Wapping Project garden surrounded by tumbledown bamboos and greenery. The shop stocks a selection of contemporary art and design, architecture and photography titles, from special collectors editions by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Robert Frank and Karl Largerfeld to international magazines, including Dazed. The titles are displayed in metal mesh cages alongside terracotta pots filled with cabbages and heather.

“As an only child I lived in my books and still have every one of them. I also ran a shop in a dis-used hen house at the bottom of our ramshackle back yard where I sold jars of soapy water to myself and imagined who I would be" smiles Wright. "Now I’ve made a tiny glass bookshop with a coal fire, selling the most beautiful books, where everyone can browse and imagine who they might become, while others watch them through the glass and imagine who they are.”

The shop will house book launches, readings and workshops. As the bookseller I sit in the shop at my typewriter working on my latest writing project, from an article on an up and coming artist to the forthcoming Wapping cookbook, all the while welcoming customers into the alternative glass space.

"The new bookshop is composed of metal, glass and timber and cold white light," says architect Joshua Wright of Shed 54 "leaving the books to glow and speak for themselves.”

The shop will open 5.30 - 10.30pm on Thursday and Friday evenings.
10.30am - 10.30pm Saturday and 10.30am - 5.30pm on Sunday.