concretevisions

Erno Goldfinger dreamt of a vertical future for London. His vision of a high-rise metropolis sought to free the ground from the viral spread of suburbia that he saw dominating the city in the 1960s. Over four decades have passed since Goldfinger's aspiration to raise the streets into the sky was made concrete with the construction of Balfron Tower in 1967. Perched on the lip of the Blackwall Tunnel in Poplar, at 27-storeys high the Brutalist monolith continues to dominate the surrounding skyline, a lasting monument to the ambition of an architect.

The Balfron Tower and its current inhabitants are the protagonists of Simon Terrill's Balfron Project that culminates in an exhibition at the Nunnery featuring the mural-sized photograph The Tower of Balfron. Captured on film with a large-format camera during one evening in November 2010, current Balfron residents were invited to participate in the image by choosing how they wished to be represented within the final picture. The Tower was flooded with stage lighting and a specific sound cue was used to herald the next shot. Each exposure lasted for 10 seconds and so with the opening of the lens, a strange stillness came over the building as movement would result in blurred erasure and those present needed to be stationary in order to remain visible. As a current resident of the tower himself, Terrill's vision for the Balfron Project is not to fictionalise nor expose the lives of those who call the tower home but rather, for the first time since the building's inception, to generate an arena for reciprocal viewing. By offering the residents the opportunity to return the camera's gaze in the manner of their choosing, it became the role of the characters to compose the subject.

The highlight event of the exhibition will be the Concrete Visions symposium at the Nunnery on the 20th of January 2011. Chaired by Chantal Faust (Tutor, Critical and Historical Studies, Royal College of Art), Concrete Visions will bring together leading thinkers in architecture, urbanism and art theory, including Edward Colless, Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies at the School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Owen Hatherley, author of Militant Modernism (O Books, 2008) and A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (Verso, 2010) and writer and podcaster Nigel Warburton, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Open University and author of Erno Goldfinger - The Life of an Architect (Routledge, 2003). The starting point of the symposium is Balfron Tower as a residual emblem of a utopian vision. The discussion will focus on how these radical spirits have been reinterpreted in the 21st century.

This consideration of the contemporary assimilation of Modernist icons and the effects of these redefinitions on existing social spaces is all the more critical as Balfron Tower is currently undergoing a process of decanting. Over the next 12 months, residents will be rehoused in order to allow for refurbishment and a transformation of the building. Now a potential site for coveted real estate, Goldfinger's ideals for social housing were initially derided and later became notorious sites of crowd disorder - identified in the references to Balfron and its younger sister Trellick as being 'towers of terror'. As a Grade II listed building, the concrete shell will remain standing, but what of the determination to build a better world? Concrete Visions will provide a forum for reflection into the restaging of social spaces, the changing idea of community and how these utopian projects have been memorialised within contemporary art.

Chantal Faust 2010

Held in conjunction with the Balfron Project
Organised and chaired by Chantal Faust
Thursday 20 January 2011 at 6:30pm
The Nunnery Gallery, London