Jordi Barreras

This work in progress,  investigates the urban planning and architecture of social housing estates in London. The aim of this series is to explore how the standardized urban planning of such housing estates, characterized by open spaces in communal areas and their permanent and intense night lighting, can be interpreted as a control strategy similar to those used in the design of prison buildings, as if to take for granted that the occupants are potentially criminals in need of continuous surveillance. 

Following this subjective interpretation the main questions that this work intends to raise are the following:
How can architecture and urban planning be used for reasons of surveillance and criminal  control and why are these uses  at social housing? Why are these complexes constantly and intensely lit at night?

Furthermore, by personalizing the theme, if I lived in one of these housing complexes, knowing the social stigma attached to it, would I also feel more secure with strong lighting of common areas? If so, why? Where does my fear come from?  Why don’t we feel the same way about private residential architecture?  Why do I have the feeling that one of these buildings is more likely to be the object of criminal aggression?  How do all my preconceived ideas about the relationship between the type of architecture and the idea of crime influence the social relationships of the people living there?  How can urban and architectural planning contribute to increasing the social stigma of the occupants?

Jordi Barreras (Barcelona, 1977) is a London based documentary photographer. He studied in the Grisart International School of Photography and has a postgraduate degree in Documentary Photography from Barcelona University.  He has recently finished his master’s in History of Art With Photography at Birbeck University, London, which researches the documentary contributions from the ’70s. Whilst his work has been rooted in traditional documentaries, he has developed a critical view, namely regarding the overlooked humanitarian depictions of victims, the misrepresentation of those who are in power and the travelling to  conflicts sites rather than questioning local realities. As a local photographer and having straight photography as his methodology to preserve realism in a post-photographic context, his work questions how neoliberalism affects our ordinary life.