What we found, at 193 Grove Road in east London, was not empty: a guy called Sydney Gale lived there with his daughter. He was a great character. The bow council had been trying to get him out for years, but he didn’t want to be rehoused in a high-rise apartment. Eventually, they found him another Victorian house, I think. He was baffled by the idea, but interested. He was a DIY fanatic in the 1970s and had spent a lot of time fixing up the house: installing a bar, hanging different wallpaper on each wall, that sort of thing. We had to make sure it wasn’t breached. A poor security guy basically had to live there for months In terms of creation, House wasn’t a complicated concept. The mold – the house itself – was already there, so the job was really to make a building within that building. We built a new foundation, removed the internal components, removed the roof, created a metal rebar to support the new structure – and then filled the house with concrete. The tricky part was finding the right stuff to spray on the walls so the concrete wouldn’t stick when we tried to remove them. It was messy and exhausting – and the whole thing took months. We started in August 1993 and didn’t finish until the end of October. The other hard thing was making sure it didn’t break. A poor security guy basically had to live there for months. House was autobiographical: I had grown up in a house in north London that looked a lot like it. But he also had this connection to everyone’s lives. There was also a political aspect to it. We were coming out of a recession and there was so much talk about housing and the cost of living. Not dissimilar to now, really. The lease the council gave us was temporary so I always thought the House would be demolished. Charles Saatchi offered to put it on wheels and take it to his gallery. But I didn’t want that. This was his location and this was where he was to stay. However, there was nothing nice about going down. It was traumatic. But I have carried it with me in the work I do now. And I’m proud that so many people have memories of it. “It was messy and exhausting”… Whiteread was making a concrete cast inside the original house. Photo: Nicholas Turpin/The Independent/ Rex/Shutterstock
James Lingwood, co-director, Artangel
We really had to go round the houses to find House. Rachel had some parameters: she wanted to do this piece in London, because that’s where she grew up. He also wanted it to be in the north or northeast because that was the part of the city he knew best. Then we had to find a house that was slated for demolition. And ideally we needed a place that could be seen from all four sides. As it happens, the place we ended up working with was part of a terrace, but most of the terrace had already been demolished. It was the right thing to do. We got lucky with the first people we approached on the board: they were open to the idea. There were also opponents, but in reality this was happening everywhere. The House became a lightning rod for all these different currents: housing was a pressing issue, then as now, so some people immediately asked why we were spending all this money to turn a house into a sculpture instead of keeping it as a house. Public art always makes waves. But we were surprised how divisive it became: there were press stories, opinion columns, TV debates, everything. The media characterized it as a battle between locals and artists, but in reality even on the same street there were different opinions. Some hated it. others really touched. We always thought of the House as temporary, but so many people came to see it that we tried to extend the lease. At first, the council voted against it. But the vote took place on the same day Rachel was awarded the Turner Prize, November 23, 1993, so there was an outcry. They gave him a little more time, but only until January. Then he went. Did I want it to stay? I always felt the whole thing was a monument to the idea of memory, and memory is elusive. So I felt it would resonate more if it was temporary. It looked so uncanny – this pale grey, mute form. Over time it would have attracted graffiti and looked more derelict. And monuments tend to disappear into their surroundings. I’m not sure we’d still be talking about it nearly 30 years later if it had remained. That said, when I go through the site I think it’s still there. Technically it is, I guess: it’s rubble under the grass. But everyone who saw it has their own image, even some who didn’t. This is one of the most beautiful things.
