the trellick tower lobby

the door opened on first press


a resident followed us through and with a smile let us through the inner door too using his fob on the already unlocked door


we stood in a small lobby with the resident while he punched the lift buttons and explained to us in another language that a lift wasn’t working


primary coloured bauhaus windows in concrete were at one end of the lobby and an exposed ceiling and a long vacant concierge was at the other


the resident offered us to take the lift first and we declined too politely to be taken seriously 


two other residents came out the lift and turned before leaving


are you visiting?


yeah, we don’t live here


because people here get funny about people coming in


We understand, we were just curious to see


you can contact the residents association I think or there’s days you can visit


we’re just going to photograph that wall and go


ok cool


we considered taking the lift to explore more but I was uneasy


there was architecture built on utopian ideas that capture the future of that time and being in that future makes for an interesting environment to capture in a photo


but it’s also a lot of people’s day to day reality from the generational social housing residents to the subcontracted and undocumented 


and these are the times that the camera feels like a toy




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