#5 Architecture: Richard Kolker

Richard Kolker's new series Cundy Street Flats details the buildings around Ebury Square and Cundy street, which were destroyed during the bombing raids of the Second World War. Kolker's work is included as part of #5 Architecture.

Bomb damage was assessed and recorded at the time by the Architects’ Department of the London County Council by ‘colouring in’ 1916 London street maps using a coded key to determine the severity of the damage. This ranged from black that signified ‘Total Destruction’ to yellow that showed areas that sustained minor impact.

In 1950 four low-rise apartment blocks, housing 111 flats, were built on this bomb site and have provided fair rent homes for the residents of Pimlico for 70 years. The owners, Grosvenor Estates, now wish to redevelop the area and have started to evict the tenants.

Cundy Street Flats uses the same watercolour and ink visual coding to imprint this history onto the building’s interiors when their own future is limited.

Richard Kolker is an artist and lecturer, completing his MA Photography at London College of Communication, UAL in 2009. His practice is an ongoing photographic exploration of the computer-generated environment and the post-photographic apparatus.

Richard has since exhibited extensively, participating in shows at the Aperture Gallery NY, The National Portrait Gallery, Musee de l’Elysee, Lausanne and Voies Off, Arles. He was selected to present at the 27^th Hyeres International Fashion and Photography Festival and for the Musee de l’Elysee’s reGeneration project.

Publications include reGeneration: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today (Thames and Hudson),  Why Art Photography? by Lucy Soutter (Routledge), and Rethinking Photography by P. Smith and C. Lefley.

Richard has taught at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and is currently a Senior Lecturer on the BA (Hons.) Photography course at the University of Portsmouth.