We sent Tiffany Tondut down to the Home Sweet Home installation where people were encouraged to make Shunt Vaults their home, get a mortgage and settle down.

Lost and homeless, I'm walking through London Bridge in search of the Big Issue's housing shelter. I bump into a postman who tells me it's at number 11, on the corner of Pandora Street. "Just keep walking straight on till you reach the police station. Pass that and you'll come to the shelter on your right." I walk a little faster; the building behind me is a mental institution and someone at the window is watching me from behind Perspex bars.

After ten minutes, I still can't find the police station. It’s with relief that I finally find the shelter. But while attempting to cross the road I accidentally step on a lamp-post. Guilt-ridden, I pinch it between my fingers and re-erect it, hoping nobody saw. This is an installation model village called Home Sweet Home, and today I'm Lady Gulliver.



Home Sweet Home's creator Abigail Conway explains how it works:

"People that are 'building' come to the front desk and buy a mortgage for their property. Given a front door key, they choose where they want to set up home and then take a little cardboard pre-fab house, which they decorate any way they choose. They erect it on their plot and that's their home. They can return to it each day after work and see how the village has expanded around them."



DP: "So, how has the installation progressed? Has it gone how as you expected?"

ABI: "Yes and no. It's been unpredictable, but predictable in its unpredictability. So much has happened. Suburbs have gone up, battles between neighbours occurred, protests developed; certain buildings removed by the council."

DP: "There's a council?!"

ABI: "The council shall remain faceless…

DP: "That's a bit ominous."

ABI: "In a way it's all quite Big Brother. Developments are always noted and fed into our digital tour of the village. The builders have become like performers when out walking the model-stage. They flaunt their asses to the spectators up in the auditorium."




DP: "Are there any aesthetic regulations?"

ABI: "No. People are free to design how they want. Saying that, there are those who respect boundaries and others wanting to sabotage. There have been squatters."

DP: "No! How?"

ABI: "They plonk their house down on someone else's plot."

SAM: "Have you built?"

ABI: "No. It's not about me as an artist. It's about the people and what they create. This is about giving a space over to people to play in."




The village is bizarre. It has an ultra-camp Shoreditch with dick and bum-shaped brothels, Scientology churches and a sort of American suburbia. It's not very multicultural though. Most of the residents are white arty-types. Where the fuck is Peckham?






Check out www.shunt.co.uk for up-to-date goings on.