Architecture Photography

Following One Curve Up Woontoren Elements

By amir2000Join the conversation ↓

I noticed the corner before I noticed the tower. It was only a balcony edge turning away from the street, pale against a dark underside, but it gave the building a direction. The pavement, passing cars and neighbouring blocks were still present at the bottom of the view. I expected the next angle to explain the first one. Instead, it removed more of that context and gave the same line somewhere else to go.

Curved balcony corner of Woontoren Elements in Amstelkwartier Amsterdam

From lower down, the balconies are ordinary places: doors open behind glass, railings mark private space, and the corner has to meet the street like any other part of a residential building. Looking higher changed that reading. The individual homes slipped out of sight. What remained was the thin bright rim, the shadow beneath it and the pause before the next level came into sight. I stopped trying to take in the whole tower and followed that one edge instead.

Layered balcony edges climbing the facade of Woontoren Elements

That decision made the subject less certain in a useful way. Every upward angle seemed to offer the same answer, then altered it. A rail became a narrow black bar. A glazed wall became a flat grey plane. The rounded corner looked broad when the level above was visible and almost sharp when it was not. The building was still solid and close, yet the camera kept taking away the clues that normally make a building easy to measure.

Pale balcony bands and dark shadow at Woontoren Elements

I began to lose the sense of which level I was looking at. The balconies no longer read as a stack of separate addresses. They became a short sequence of marks against the light, each one close enough to the next to keep the eye moving. The tower did not need to be photographed from a distance to feel tall. Height arrived through the effort of following the corner after the street had disappeared.

There was a small resistance in that upward movement. The line was easy to follow, but it never provided a final point of arrival. It bent out of sight, returned above itself and made the next level feel close enough to reach. That is why the building gradually stopped behaving like a collection of homes in my mind. It became a surface with its own pace: white edge, dark recess, white edge, dark recess.

Balcony corner receding upward on Woontoren Elements in Amsterdam

By then, the curve was no longer an architectural feature I could name and move past. It had become the route upward. The line rose, turned out of sight and left the rest of the building behind it.

Architecture gallery | Architecture Photography posts

Amir
Photographer, Builder, Dreamer
amir2000.nl

Your perspective

What caught your eye?

A detail in a photograph, a memory of the place, or a different way of seeing it. Leave a comment.

What caught your eye?

Another story to follow

Azrieli Spiral Tower Rising Into Tel Aviv's Skyline

Metro Tower and the Broken Grid of Ramat Gan