Architecture

Buildings where the building is the reason to go: the inside-out, the Art Deco, the concrete, and the ones that make no sense at all until somebody explains them.

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Balfron Tower

Goldfinger's first tower, and the one he moved into for two months to see what he had done.

TowersConcrete & brutalist

Photo by Graeme Maclean, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Erno Goldfinger designed it in 1963 for the London County Council and it was finished in 1967, the prototype for Trellick five years later: the same slim service tower of lifts and chutes, joined to the flats by bridges every third floor, standing over the Brownfield Estate beside the approach to the Blackwall Tunnel. What sets it apart is what he did next. Goldfinger and his wife moved into flat 130 for two months in 1968, held drinks parties for the neighbours and asked them what did not work. It has been protected since 1996 and refurbished for private sale, which is its own argument about what happened to social housing.

Where
St Leonard's Road, E14 0UY
Nearest station
Langdon Park · 5 min walk

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