Trellick Tower Under Attack Again

Trellick Tower in West London (5 Golborne Road, W10), an icon of modernism in England, is under attack again, this time from David Cameron’s allies. According to yesterday’s Observer  (5.11.06 News, p.6 ‘Hate Builiding: Ask the Tories to knock it down’), a Tory think tank the Policy Exchange led by James O’Shaughnessy wants to put the power to  ‘X-list’ a series of urban buildings in the hands of local residents. Top of O’Shaugnessy’s personal x-list is Trellick Tower: he describes it as ‘a brutalist residential monster’. For a different view,based on interviews with people who have lived in Trellick, read my Biography of Ernö Goldfinger.

It is easy to see why people react strongly to Trellick – it is uncompromising and industrial in its appearance. Some people have read it as an autobiographical reflection of the character of its architect, the strong-willed, Hungarian émigré Ernö Goldfinger. Trellick’s distinctive silhouette, with its separate lift and services tower joined to the main block by walkways, is a local landmark and a cultural icon. It regularly features in television advertisements, pop videos, on book covers and even t-shirts. But this is much more than tower block as giant sculpture. Its massive wall of bush-hammered concrete is not beautiful: some people hate it; but to me it is sublime. It is also cleverly designed inside to maximise light, with most apartments having windows on two or three sides. In the 1970s it was known as the ‘Tower of Terror’ and was a hotbed of crime largely because of the lack of control over who entered the building – a situation that was transformed by the introduction of a concierge system. Not that Trellick is straightforwardly the yuppies’ paradise sometimes featured in colour supplements: still largely social housing and in some respects poorly maintained, its outline has been  disfigured by telephone masts and a botch of cables…but these are hardly reasons for bringing in the demolition team.

Trellick Tower is in good company though – another prominent landmark  buildling high on O’Shaugnessy’s hitlist is Battersea Power Station. That is surely a political mistake. Even though just a husk of a building now, it is much loved (and not just by Pink Floyd fans…What is missing from the article is any sense of how this think tank plans to improve on these two landmark buildings – no doubt with something bland and inconspicuous. Or is this all a bit of political posturing by David Cameron’s friends, a miscalculated attempt at popularism?

Comments

[Thomas Wensing]

When you are in love with (uncompromising) housing estates, some required reading is: Roger Sherwood - Modern Housing Prototypes Harvard University Press; website: www.housingprototypes.org It is intriguing to note how the emphasis in recent decades has shifted away from housing projects which look rough on the outside, but feature great spaces and qualities on the inside to housing estates with fancier -or should I say; reactionary- exteriors and crappy floorplans. Yet another proof of the power of imagery in late capitalist society. In addition, no one ever talks about the way in which housing estates should foster the opportunities for social interaction and community life these days. Even though some of the claims of the modernists have been overstated or downright false, I am surely missing architects stressing social motives rather than pecuniary interests underlying their housing designs. Sherwood's book advocates a method of design in which - since not all data may initially be clear - earlier examples of housing are categorized and qualitatively assessed in order for them to be applied as prototypes in the early stages of the design process. This may not be scientific in the true sense of the word, but I guess an empirical approach is the closest you can get in architecture. Let's hope a renewed debate over sustainable habitats, without resorting to kitsch will soon ensue.