Lotus not just another shed.

Colin Chapman our Enzo Ferrari, humble beginnings reduced to a plumbing shop, very creative.

Not a museum with interactive archival footage promoting pioneering British engineering, historic footage, with vintage memorabilia and collectables, (there already exists a clothing range available if you go to Piccadilly, but there is not the historic connection.)

Central Saint Martins could have produced a visual interactive installation, installed in the showroom front window, as some real estate agents do.

This could be a redeeming opportunity, providing a sense of history and a moment of the incidental, where you stop and contemplate and feel some historic context.

I pictured two to three cars in the workshops with volunteers in vintage Lotus showroom attire, explaining the mechanics and the period which established Lotus.

There doesn't seem to be any record of what could be the Colin Chapman Papers, listing correspondence from the paper trail of custom from the showroom office of Lotus.

Last year I spotted a brightly coloured Lotus on display at St Mary's school in Hornsey for their school fair, these vehicles are nostalgic, which is probably how we should see cars as London grows as a city of the future. Rotterdam has a historic boat and crane museum and people come from around the world, and has led to further regeneration projects.

Below is a flier link that promoted the HORNSEY CARNIVAL from July last year:
This carnival travels from Priory Park through Crouch End and back through Hornsey.

To celebrate Hornsey’s history, they had 10 classic Lotus Cars joining the parade. On the CEC web site it mentions Lotus Cars being founded in Hornsey, and that locals saved the original Lotus showroom from demolition.

https://crouchendcreatives.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/11222298_925...

There is real interest, it just needs stimulation and planning as a project for the future, we may attract tangible attention from Proton Holdings as Woking has McLaren, and there are many ways this could manifest, (technology for a peddle car designed by a local school.)

My brother is a teacher in Australia, and has taken on projects like this competing against Honda funded projects, his students get jobs, and I take inspiration from that, next is solar.

These projects involve statistics, carried out by students using laptops, shaving time and developing design prototypes, production techniques, mechanical proficiency, endurance, build budgets, schedules, amazing skills. Their workshop at school is about the same size as Lotus, Hornsey and that's not all the students do, there are other specialisms with other skills also.

http://pedalcarracing.info

Isokon another iconic British firm, now based in Chiswick, produced the Jack Pritchard Papers published by the UEA, you may have visited the Isokon building on Lawn Road, Belsize Park. You can walk it from Gospel Oak Station on our Barking line, from Harringay Green Lanes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isokon

Within the Pritchard Papers, there is correspondence between Harris Lebus of Tottenham, buying Isokon which would have revolutionised our homes, (with reductionist furniture, post Bauhaus, if not contemporary to it.)
I'm sure there are similar jems in the Colin Chapman records yet to be discovered, as a window to the time.

www.portal.uea.ac.uk/library/archives/pritchard
www.sawe.org/node/7290
The other question is do records from the Hornsey site still survive?

It took the Eighties revival under Conran decades later for it to hit the high street, as you see furniture is my other interest. Isokon produce the most contemporary furniture around the world, pushing timber technology.

One day there will be a housing development and it's USP will be this Colin Chapman building, maybe even a school, or a technical college for further education, (when government wake up to child yields in population growth, and promote opportunities for our children.)

The disappointing thing is the workshop roof is not sympathetic to the period of the build, it is supposed to be listed, this detail would not have been complicated to execute, just no thought given, anything goes but nothing goes deep. Jewson's should be best placed as a builders merchant.

The office upstairs remains in tact, and they have painted the woodwork in some F&B grey, the plumbing shop could also have adapted their signage consistent with the original. So a positive that could be taken is the Spasbestos roof has been removed, which is what would have compromised the site, with complete removal.

In the cold reality where anything dynamic is dead in the water. The museum may only exist as a shelf of Scalectrix and a trophy behind the counter, or from a small shed can come great potential, history can take us forward.