Photographing 55 Victoria Street for Lee Marley during the pandemic remains one of the more unusual architectural commissions I have undertaken.
Central London was almost entirely still. Victoria Street, usually defined by buses, taxis and the constant pressure of traffic, had become strangely open. For once, it was possible to stand in the middle of the road and look properly at the building: not between vehicles, not against the clock, but from the position the architecture had always demanded.
That rare emptiness created an extraordinary photographic opportunity. The building could be read at the scale of the street, its brickwork, massing and corner presence unobstructed. The city had temporarily withdrawn, leaving the architecture exposed with a clarity that would normally have been impossible.
What stayed with me, however, was not only the access. It was the decision to commission the photography at all.
At a moment when much of the country had paused, Lee Marley Group was looking outward. There was something revealing in that: a restless instinct to find possibility in difficult circumstances, to recognise that even an empty city might offer something valuable, and to keep documenting the work when the easier response would have been to wait.
That attitude feels entirely consistent with the nature of the business.
Brickwork and scaffolding are disciplines shaped by exposure. The people who carry them out work at height, in discomfort, in heat, cold, wind and rain. They operate within narrow tolerances, complicated programmes and unforgiving commercial realities. The work must remain accurate when conditions are not. It must be delivered safely, on time and within budget, regardless of how inhospitable the day becomes.
A particular kind of character emerges from that environment. Practical, resilient and alert. Comfortable with risk, but never careless. Used to relying on others and being relied upon in return. There is little room for abstraction when you are laying brick from a scaffold many storeys above the ground. Judgment becomes physical. Standards become habitual. Teamwork is not a corporate phrase but a condition of getting home safely and completing the job properly.
You can see something of that culture in the finished building. The façade appears calm and controlled, but it is the result of sustained technical discipline: thousands of individual decisions, made by people working in exposed conditions, accumulated into a single architectural surface.
The pandemic emptied the streets and gave me the chance to make photographs that would otherwise have been impossible. Lee Marley’s decision to commission them said something larger about the company: when circumstances change, keep looking, keep moving and find the opportunity that others may have missed.
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