‘The whole object of building high is to free the ground for children and grown-ups to enjoy Mother Earth and not to cover every inch with bricks and mortar’ Ernö Goldfinger

Trellick Tower is a Grade II* listed high-rise building which has gained its status in recent decades as one of the UK’s most iconic brutalist buildings. The tower sits on the Cheltenham Estate in West London’s Notting Hill and consists of 217 dwellings, efficiently arranged over 31 storeys; Trellick was of its time, the tallest apartment block in Europe. Conceived by Hungarian-born architect Ernö Goldfinger, the building was designed as a social housing project seeking to ease the post-war housing crisis of the time. Construction began in 1968 and the building opened to residents four years later, just as work commenced on neighbouring Grenfell Tower in the summer of 1972.

The exposed concrete finish and overtly brutalist silhouette of the tower forms Trellick’s distinctive profile, with its slim and sculptural service core, housing lifts, stairs and refuse chutes and cantilevered boiler house on the 32^nd and 33^rd floor. Efficiency in the structural layout reduces the necessity for corridors, located on every third floor and space-saving initiatives consistent throughout the design details: sliding doors to bathrooms and light switches embedded in door surrounds. Extensive glazing facing each of the timber-clad balconies maximises the potential for natural light to flood the interiors and alongside residential accommodation, the building houses six shops, an office, youth and women’s centres.

Drawing strong comparisons to Le Corbusier’s Unite d’habitation; a single slab vertical village in Marseille, housing 1600 residents and an internal shopping street at its centre, Trellick came to be considered as the ultimate expression of Goldfinger’s philosophy of high-rise planning, citing: ‘Whenever space is enclosed a spatial sensation will automatically result for persons who happen to be within it… it is the artist who comprehends the social requirements of his time and is able to integrate the technical potentialities in order to shape the spaces of the future’. In an attempt to empathise with the residents he sought to serve, Goldfinger occupied an apartment Balfron Tower to experience first-hand the good and the bad of his building, hosting regular cocktail parties with his wife to encourage feedback from his neighbours and eliminate major issues prior to the construction of Trellick.

Despite such a socially conscious approach to the design of the building, Trellick has had numerous phases of public perception. Brutalist architecture was falling out of favour by the time the tower was completed, and poor management and lack of security led to vandalism, drug abuse and prostitution almost from the outset; issues that sadly blighted what should have been an innovative and exciting development in social housing. In 1986 the radical new opportunity for residents to buy was introduced and the incredibly high demand and subsequent sales to existing occupants ensued. Lobbies for building improvements led to the implementation of a 24-hour concierge, a playground, new lifts, water and heating systems and subsequently, a renewed sense of pride in the building flourished. Government funding for a £17 million renovation by John McAslan and Partners contributed to major restoration and by the 1990s, Trellick Tower had been reimagined as a highly desirable place to live, gaining its Grade II* listing status in 1998 and came to be known as a landmark of British brutalist architecture.