London’s technicolour Potemkin village

London’s technicolour Potemkin village

In London’s East End, the dockside district of Poplar, bombed in the First and Second World Wars, has since been a place of architectural curiosity. A muddle of postwar council estates and the neat remains of truncated Victorian and Georgian terraces, Poplar is home to tote-bag famous examples of utopian public housing, such as Balfron Tower, a block designed by the brutalist architect Ernő Goldfinger. Chrisp Street Market, a low-slung Fifties p…