Opportunity Area

I’ve recently bought two second-hand tilt-shift lenses, designed for architectural photography. Mechanically shifting the lens’s optics upwards allows me to photograph tall buildings without distortion. The technique dates back to the nineteenth century, but the current frenzy of high rise building in my local area makes it increasingly useful; allowing me to contrast the human street below and the towers above.

The Elephant and Castle skyline now looks like a bar chart of inner city London land values. New building heights dropped from three storey Victorian and Edwardian terraces to bungalows and two storey houses as London’s population fell through the 1950’s and into the 80’s.

In the last 10 years all that has been reversed with a frenzy of commercial high-rise housing. By my count there are currently 25 new towers, between 25 and 47 storeys high, built or in the pipeline in Elephant and Castle. Some stand alone, others are surrounded by lower blocks. The clearances of council tenants and traders from the demolished Heygate Estate and Elephant and Castle shopping centre have been contested by campaign group 35 percent. Of the 3,564 homes completed within the Elephant and Castle ‘opportunity area’ to date, only 175 (5%) are designated as affordable.

I am trying to catch up with all this, recording the buildings yet to be bulldozed, the new towers rising all around us, and the thousands of people who live, work and travel through here.

The London College of Communication (previously the London College of Printing) is slated for demolition once its new campus across Elephant Road is complete.

Skipton House, the 6 storey office block seen here directly behind the incongruous looking Bakerloo Line station, is expected to be replaced by a huge complex of towers promising 35% affordable housing and 1500 student rooms.

A vast new entrance and concourse for the Northern Line Station is taking shape beneath the current entrance. The existing station would fail to meet the demand from the increased population.