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The first thing you’ll notice on Garner Street, an unassuming side street off Hackney Road, is the Blue House.
Unlike its London brick neighbours, it has a playful, cartoon-like clapboard façade, with a house-shaped cut out at the front of the building and cookie-cutter crenelations at the top.
It is, of course, entirely blue, from its entrance gates to its window frames, which take on a darker shade.
And, for those who fancy living in one of Bethnal Green’s most distinctive buildings, it’s for sale: the house has been listed with Hemingway+K for £3 million.
The Blue House was built in 2002 by owner-architect Sean Griffiths. One of the founders and then-directors of FAT Architecture, known for its light-hearted, irreverent designs, Griffiths intended the building as a live-work space for himself and his family, describing it as a “house within a house”.
It was initially built as a three-storey, three-bedroom house with a self-contained one-bedroom flat at the rear of the second floor.
But in 2022, two decades later, Griffiths returned to the building and converted it into a single five-bedroom home, adding a fourth storey roof extension that opens onto a pebbled terrace.
"I have a complex relationship to this house, as I lived there for many years and so inevitably it is bound up with memories of my early career and family life," Griffiths told Dezeen in 2022.
"But it's also weird being an architect living in your own house because you live with your mistakes —of course, that is what you notice, rather than the good bits— so it was nice to come back and rectify some, if not all, of them."
Inside the extension is a studio space, intended for Griffiths’ former partner, the landscape designer Lynn Kinnear, who passed away in 2024.
“It’s sort of South Park on the outside and [pioneering modernist architect] Adolf Loos on the inside,” said Griffiths in a video about the house.
Inside, the house covers 2,300 square feet over four floors.
Unusually, it is accessed through its courtyard garden, with a kitchen and living room on the first floor, connected by a lobby with built-in blue cabinetry. This matches the skirting boards in the kitchen, and the darker, blue-framed bi-fold doors.
There are staircases at both ends of the building which, say the agents, “give the option of independence”.
The three upper floors have been configured to provide three bedrooms and two workspaces, one with a separate kitchenette.
Griffiths has not been shy of colour: there are warm cork floors on the upper levels —darker hardwood parquet on the ground floor— with green window frames onto the roof terrace; a moss green carpet on the stairs; baby pink on the walls of the stairwell, top floor studio and bedrooms.
“Despite its eccentric exterior, The Blue House provides a very considered, and in many ways traditional, space for modern living,” says James Klonaris at Hemingway+K.
“Its flow and arrangement are versatile, whether used as a large single home, split into live and work arrangements or for multi-generational living. Its rooms are large and its materials are warm and inviting.”
“The courtyard garden is a wonderful way to enter the house and is like an extra room in warmer months,” he adds.
“It's beautifully planted, providing a year-round backdrop through the dining room glazing, and it gives the house a cocooning sense of insulation and privacy.
“The house is incredibly light, with so many windows throughout, and these in turn, along with the fairly substantial roof terrace, provide some excellent outlooks across the rooftops and city.”
The Blue House is currently owned by Griffiths and Kinnear’s daughter. Its sale is the first time it has been on the market since it was built.
Over the last 23 years, the house has been reshaped and reconfigured to adapt to its owners’ changing needs.
Now, the agents say that it retains its flexibility: its two workspaces can be converted into extra bedrooms, while the upper floors can be used as office space or as a separate flat, thanks to its kitchenette and extra stairwell.
“Whoever ends up living here will have a creative eye and appreciation of the playful details and flexible layout, but I think anybody could enjoy Blue House as a home,” says Klonaris. “It's a superb house.”
