Ellie Davies
Look for the Unusual - Balfron Tower and Robin Hood Gardens. Aesthetics social politics and listing.
Summary
Balfron Tower and Robin Hood Gardens
Two brutalist social housing icons. Located a mere 300 meters apart and with just five years between them in age. One, has been successfully listed. With the social tenants removed, renovations are currently underway to transform the tower into a high-end utopia. The other, after two successive ‘certificates of immunity from listing’ were granted by the Heritage Minster, the social housing landmark is being demolished in stages and redeveloped as high-rise tower blocks. The west-wing was levelled in 2017, with the building of its replacement currently underway. The east-wing however still stands, with social tenants residing in it.
I have used these two sites to discuss, explore, highlight and comment on their social politics. Specifically, with regards to the building’s aesthetics and the imperfections in the current listing process.
Are there areas of the listing process in which aesthetic opinion, orison from social politics, is given space to operate, influence decision-making and manifest in the real-world?
Additional info
Through my practice-based research I have used black and white analogue photography both to speak to the modern fetishisation of brutalist structures and to bring documents, words, plans and correspondences otherwise hidden, into the light - via the use of printed acetate. This combination of tacit and codified knowledge expressed visually within site-images seeks to create an aesthetic of resistance.
Practice Description
During this work I have experimented with the process of masking during the analog black and white printing process. I have conducted a series of site trips to Balfron Tower and Robin Hood Gardens with the Ebony RSW45, a large format black and white film camera, I have hand processed these negatives and have hand exposed through acetate and onto photographic paper. It is during the hand exposure process that I am able to embed my chosen plan, text or correspondence within my images by layering an acetate sheet with the document printed onto it in black ink, over the photographic paper.
The resulting series of fourteen prints have been inspired by my writing for my body of research and seek to tell a story of these two sites.
The series of prints contain information relating to:
-Situated Writing – a form of free writing written my myself conducted at my two sites.
-Original plans of the two sites by Goldfinger and the Smithsons respectively (I am unable to share these prints digitally due to strict copyright laws)
-Official Government listing criteria
-Text as to why Balfron Tower is listed and why Robin Hood Gardens is not listed from Historic England.
-Correspondence from the Tower Hamlets planning portal showing agreement to refurbish/demolish
-Balfron Tower's refurbishment plans and Blackwall Reach redevelopment plans - Blackwall Reach is the development which is replacing Robin Hood Gardens.
-Words denoting listing or demolition
