Rab Harling

Narrated by Maxine Peake, this feature documentary explores the failures and deception that have caused a chronic shortage of social housing in Britain.

Balfron Tower, an example of the abandoned Futurist path of architecture that haunts the area surrounding the cold, gaping maw of Blackwall Tunnel, offers romantically dystopian views of Poplar’s social housing ghetto, with the silhouette of the imperial seat of power, wrapped in a glass-and-concrete shell of our debts, on the horizon. Our future is not determined by what we have managed to create, but first and foremost by our failed dreams and fantasies. We should pay more attention to them.

Over a period of three years, Rab captured large-format colour transparencies, from the same position in over 120 of his neighbour’s flats in Ernö Goldfinger’s Grade II listed Balfron Tower. The resulting transparencies depict a “fascinating and moving” (Barnabas Calder, 2014) portrayal of a community living with housing insecurity.

A public market serving the daily need of the local working class community has existed in Poplar at Chrisp Street since Victorian times. In 1951, the market underwent a significant redesign by modernist architect Sir Frederick Gibberd, in celebration of the Festival of Britain, creating the UK’s first pedestrianised shopping centre. After years of managed decline, regeneration is looming for Chrisp Street Market. A Registered Social Landlord, a property developer, and a Labour authority seek to create their vision of “the New Shoreditch”, with a brief to “change the social mix” of this 9-acre site, situated in the shadow of Canary Wharf, no matter the cost to the established community.

Filmed over midsummer 2019 in Fife, Scotland. This film accompanies a 358 page book.

Filmed over midsummer 2019 in Fife, Scotland. This film accompanies a 358 page book.