Will Lee

Coniston House (1:3)

19th April - 2nd June 2013 

Coniston House is the third in a series of photographic collages by Will Lee. 
 
‘The photograph initially appears to be a portrait of a squat and grimy building. On closer inspection it reveals itself to be an improbable collage of parts rather than the elevation of a habitable structure.
 
The subject is in reality one of a group of five twenty-storey LCC residential towers built in Camberwell in 1963, a design repeated elsewhere across South London. It was chosen for its expressive, yet standardised, arrangement of storeys, flats and materials that have, in turn, suggested the process to which it has been subjected.
 
Each unique detail making up the 60m tall x 17m wide elevation has been photographed, while repeated details are omitted. Variable dimensions are reduced to a minimum, and the remaining distilled form is re-assembled and printed at full scale, approximately 3 x 3m in size.
 
This procedure reduces the façade to its grammar, a minimum of information from which various unfamiliar permutations of the tower could be rebuilt. Mundane and domestic components take on a new significance as they form closer relationships with their surroundings, while attention is drawn to the scale of the dirt and crude construction joints holding the building together - evidence of builders, residents and the passage of 50 years’.

Will Lee has been working as an architect in London for fifteen years, predominantly in housing. He previously studied at Camberwell College of Art, Mackintosh School of Architecture and Westminster University. Previous exhibitions include House Gallery, Camberwell and the Nunhead Open. 

Coniston House is one of an ongoing series of photomontages, which have developed out of an initial study of the building and Will’s subsequent practice in the same field.