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The lure of tall buildings: A guide to the risky but lucrative world of rooftoppers

The ultimate selfie can bring kudos and cash to urban rooftoppers

When teenager Harry Gallagher clambered on to the roof of Canary Wharfs highest building his exploits went viral. Gallagher, 19, aka Nightscape, is a rooftopper, someone who gains access to buildings and restricted spaces to take photographs of themselves, often hanging in precarious poses. To the uninitiated, it might appear to be a new phenomenon, but rooftoppings genesis lies in the long-established urban explorer movement, known as urbex.

An early exponent was Jeff Chapman, or Ninjalicious, the late Toronto-based explorer who in the early noughties infiltrated buildings and underground systems, recording his adventures in his zine, Infiltration. Chapman tended to shun the limelight, but now rooftoppers are aiming ever higher in their quest for personal glory and reward.

Urban exploring is beginning to splinter into different practices, said Theo Kindynis, a criminologist at Roehampton University. What was traditionally thought of as urban exploration, fetishists exploring abandoned mental asylums, that sort of thing, is mutating. Youve now got subway explorers and youve got rooftoppers like Nightscape doing the foot-dangling thing. As a result, youve got new attitudes and etiquettes evolving. The old take-nothing-but-photos-leave-nothing-but-footprints adage is increasingly irrelevant.

Gallagher has previously targeted Robin Hood airport in Doncaster, the roof of West Hams new stadium, and the London Olympic parks Orbit structure. His exploits are posted on his YouTube channel and promoted through Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. His latest hack, released online last week, will have helped send his reputation soaring. Gallagher and a friend can be seen climbing on to the roof of One Canada Square and scaling its pyramid.

At the start of the video, already viewed 450,000 times and liked by 45,000 people on YouTube, the pair describe the challenge as almost impossible and express astonishment that they were able to pull it off. But Kindynis is not convinced. These guys are notorious within the scene for poaching other peoples spots. I highly doubt they were the first people to get on to the roof of One Canada Square. They were probably told how to do it by someone else. Within the urbex community, these things tend to be kept hush-hush, but now its on YouTube and they will have changed their security measures so nobody else will be able to enjoy that rooftop.

Within certain elements of the community, these guys are not liked. They are seen as a problem. Cranes and construction sites and rooftops are getting locked down because these guys are prostituting it to social media.

The high-profile stunts of Gallagher and his cohorts seem a world away from urbexs original ethos and its political overtones. In an article for Domus magazine in 2011, Dr Bradley Garrett, an urban explorer and a geographer at Southampton University, suggested that urbex practitioners were reviving the practice of usufruct which basically means that someone has the right to use and enjoy the property of another, provided it is not changed or damaged in any way.

But Kindynis suggests the selfie generation are not in it for the philosophy.

For the people doing it, its all about the image, getting the cool, exclusive YouTubable footage. Its about building their personal brand, all about the image, all about the spectacle.

Harry Gallagher. Photograph: @night.scape

And why not? Building a rooftopping brand can be lucrative. Gallaghers Nightscape website sells original T-shirts for 24.99 and hoodies for 39.99. Not that he is unique in turning his exploits into cash. Urban free climber James Kingstons website sells posters of him balancing precariously in a variety of places as well as a range of T-shirts.

But selling merchandise is only one element. Gallaghers highly stylised video of the One Canada Square hack has its own soundtrack, which carries links to promote the featured songs. He recently appeared in a short film for fashion brand Palladiums new range of waterproof boots.

As Gallaghers mother, Amanda, told the Times: We come from a modest background and never had any financial stability. The day he went up West Ham [stadium], we couldnt buy a jar of coffee that morning. By that night, hed gone viral. Thats when he came to me and said: Now, you get it, Mum. Now you see what this is, what its allabout.

Milo Hale, a photographer and rooftopper with 15,000 followers on Instagram, believes the movement is coming out of the shadows and into the mainstream. The whole Instagram scene has helped it develop over the last few months, Hale said. It has completely blown up around the world. It was definitely one of those things that was quite underground and people didnt really know about it and now its come out to the wider audience through social media.

Hale, 20, who got into rooftopping through parkour, or free-running, acknowledges that its growing popularity poses new challenges. Brands are gravitating towards rooftoppers as social media influencers because they cut through to younger audiences far more effectively.

One survey suggested that 70% of teenage YouTube subscribers trust influencer opinions over traditional celebrities. But the rooftoppers risk losing credibility if they are seen to be too commercial.

Theres a lot of companies Im in talks with, Hale said. But for people like me and rooftoppers on Instagram, theres this desire to want to keep your work authentic. Obviously, I want to work with brands and create content for them, and to be able to fund what I want to do, but at the same time I think theres a sort of caution from creators and rooftoppers, particularly to not sell it off in the wrong light and not just sell out just because they can.

Not everyone seems to have such qualms, and there is a sense that many rooftopping images are in danger of becoming cliched. Every day I look at Instagram and there are literally hundreds of kids doing it, Kindynis said.

The surge in interest also brings problems. I get a lot of messages from people asking, oh can you show me how to get up on that rooftop blah blah blah, and I always say no because I dont want to be responsible for someone going up somewhere theyre not comfortable with, and if that goes wrong, thats on my conscience, Hale said. Its difficult finding that balance between sharing it and not not forcing people to do it but not pushing people into it when you know they shouldnt be doing it.

A rooftopper in Dubai. Photograph: Keow Wee Loong/Barcroft Media

The UKs burgeoning army of rooftoppers is unlikely to eclipse the success of Viki Odintcova, a Russian model recently snapped in a precarious pose leaning out of Dubais Cayan Tower skyscraper the worlds tallest building when it opened in 2013.

The 22-year-old, whose Instagram account now has more than 3million followers, uses her social media presence to promote a bewildering variety of brands. Visitors can click on tags in the images that take them to other Instagram sites promoting everything from teeth-whitening products to bracelets and underwear.

Odintcova is not the only Russian model to use outlandish rooftop stunts to promote herself. Angela Nikolau, 23, was photographed on a crane at the top of a 640m tower under construction in China. With around 450,000 followers on Instagram, she is fast carving out a reputation for taking the most dangerous selfies in the world. Like Odintcova, her account is tagged to a growing range of brands. One of the stunts was sponsored by a Russian travel insurance company.

Unsurprisingly, the major fashion brands have also clocked the trend. In 2014 Nike launched its All Conditions Gear range, complete with a promotional video in which a hooded figure is poised dramatically on a roof edge. Gallagher has promoted Converse Chuck II trainers in an edgy urban explorer montage. Red Bull TV has an urbex section featuring a group of urban explorers [who] risk life and limb to get inside, above and around some of the most forbidden places onEarth.

But the appropriation of urban exploration by the selfie generation is triggering a backlash. Kindynis said that some within the movement, especially the subterranean explorers who roam sewers and subways, were going offline because they dont want to attract the same attention and dont want it turned into a spectator sport the way rooftopping has been.

They are, however, likely to be outnumbered by the many others who know that taking the ultimate selfie can earn them kudos and cash. Kindynis is worried about where rooftop mania will end. More and more risks are being taken. I dont think anyones died in London, but its only a matter of time.

YOUTUBE STARS

November 2014 Cosmo Calisse explores the rooftops of Toronto with two parkour enthusiasts: 17,000 views

February 2016 Jimmy Cheung films the view from the One World Trade Center in New York: 20,000 views

September 2016 Harry Gallagher, aka Nightscape, sneaks into West Hams stadium in London: 4m views

9 February Angela Nikolau climbs one of Shanghais highest buildings with boyfriend Ivan Beerkus: 41,946 views

26 February Russian model Victoria Odintcova hangs off Dubais 1,005ft Cayan Tower: 5.4m views