I’ve always been fascinated by Erno Goldfinger’s two great near-identical residential towers, bookending London: the 1967 Balfron Tower in the east and the 1972 Trellick Tower in the west - both now Grade II listed buildings.

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Long, long ago - so long that it was just before London’s Docklands were regenerated, and you still found alternative communities of people living in boats there, and wild horses cantering around the wharfs - I decided I needed to take an aerial photo of the Isle of Dogs, where all this pleasing dereliction was about to be replaced with tin sheds (and after them, though this was unimaginable at the time, Canary Wharf). Not having the use of a helicopter, I decided the best place to get my shot was from the top of the Balfron Tower.

This was a period (also unimaginable today) when such blocks of social housing were open-access. There was no entryphone, no concierge, no CCTV, no security of any kind in fact. You just pushed the beefy hardwood-framed glass door open, walked into the lobby, and took the noisome lift as high as it would go. Somewhere or other - whether the detached lift tower or the main block I don’t now remember - I found some stairs leading higher. At the top, a door. No padlocks or alarms or any such nonsense, in fact it was swinging in the wind. And so I stepped out onto the roof of Balfron Tower, with its reassuringly beefy concrete parapets, and found that I could indeed see the whole of the Isle of Dogs, with the river sweeping round it in its huge curve. Trouble was, my camera was too basic to zoom in on much of this but I took some shots (Ilford black and white film, naturally) anyway. For all I know, they are still lurking in the archives of BD, for which I was working at the time.

Since when, I’ve also been into the flats in North Kensington’s Trellick Tower (slightly gentrified here and there, but not nearly as much as urban myth would have it). I’ve read the biography of Goldfinger, which details his period of living with his wife Ursula in a flat at the top of the Balfron Tower, and the champagne parties they held for residents (even though Erno himself hated champagne) to find out what they thought of the place.  What emerged from this early example of community consultation was there were not enough lifts for the population of the tower. Goldfinger accordingly designed an extra one into the follow-on Trellick Tower.

Why am I telling you all this? Only because Balfron Tower is the subject of a new exhibition by artist Simon Terrill, called the Balfron Project. Terrill is the block’s artist-in-residence. We can’t do justice to the main image here, which in reality is a C-type print measuring 2.25m by 1.8m. But if you look very closely you might just be able to make out that all the block’s residents have come out onto their balconies and assembled at its foot, beneath film lights.  As Terrill says, “The camera will focus its lens on the tower and the residents of Balfron will have the opportunity to return the gaze in the manner of their choosing.”

The Balfron project runs at the Nunnery gallery in Bow until January 23. Details here: http://is.gd/ke2ae