ANYTHING fancy Kensington can do, funky Clerkenwell can do, if not better, then at least with more street cred. Grimy old Old Street may not have the peace and general loveliness of Kensington Gardens, but that hasn’t stopped it from doing its own version of the Serpentine Pavilion. Built by the Architecture Foundation to christen the Yard, their year-long exhibition space while Zaha Hadid knocks up a new HQ behind Tate Modern, Hairywood is a collaboration between 6a Architects and the fashion designers and purveyors of magnificent fabrics, Eley Kishimoto.

A six-metre tower peers over the street like a giant periscope, clad in plywood laser-cut to EK’s pattern of Rapunzel’s tresses tumbling down to the pavement. Climb to the top and there’s a peaceful little room with gorgeous patterned sofa from which to ogle the top deck of the number 55 bus and picturesque articulated lorries en route to Tilbury. This collision of public and private space was inspired by a scene from Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot ’s Holiday (1958), in which the intimacy of Hulot’s hotel interior is juxtaposed with the chaos of the public beach.

But the wit and clever use of materials is what you’d expect of 6a, a firm which first attracted attention in 2002 by designing the Savile Row clothing store Oki-Ni, with its undulating oak floors and display pedestals made from piles of felt.

6a is now building a large development of shops, restaurants and flats at a tourist resort in Croatia, covered in local stone punctured with holes to dapple light; and a block of social housing in Sénart, on the edge of Paris. 6a also features in 40 under 40 and judging from the whispers at the opening party, seems to be the practice the other 39 most admire, and fear.

• Hairywood is at the Yard, EC1 (020-7253 9425), until August 31