Trellick Tower III
Golborne Road, London W10
Architect: Ernö Goldfinger
Register for similar homes"Monumental in style, with its free-standing service tower and surreal boiler house, it retains beautiful detailing and a rich use of materials", Open House London
This exceptional two-bedroom apartment, with a large west-facing balcony, is located in Trellick Tower, one of London’s iconic buildings. Built in the late 1960s, and designed by Erno Goldfinger, Trellick Tower has been Grade II* listed in recognition of its architectural significance.
The current owners have been sympathetic to the original design of the apartment creating an attractive, contemporary space. Concrete walls have been carefully revealed throughout the apartment alongside existing steel door-frames with their original and unusual architrave light switches. A limited palette of three materials: oak, steel and concrete are repeated throughout. Dark oak parquet runs throughout the apartment, inspired by Goldfinger’s own house, the National Trust property, 2, Willow Road in Hampstead.
Entry to the apartment is on the sixth floor, where original concrete stairs descend to the accommodation on the fifth floor. The kitchen cabinets, with a single oak-veneer and polished stainless-steel counter-top span the length of the kitchen and are complimented by a one-piece oak and steel shelf. The joinery, made for the apartment, was designed and built by Buchholz Berlin. The founder, Katja Buchholz, worked for David Chipperfield for many years as an architect before turning to furniture and product.
The kitchen opens into a large living room and looks on to the top of a row of London Plane Trees through the west facing sliding windows. The balcony runs the full length of the apartment and can be accessed from both from the kitchen and dining room.
The two east-facing bedrooms are both generous sizes, with custom-built fitted wardrobes and large floor to ceiling windows. The bathroom has Vola and Thomas Hoof fittings and a geometric tiling design, again inspired by Willow Road. The heating is run off a communal system and is included in the service charge. The original metal storage heaters have been stripped back and lovingly refurbished.
Trellick Tower is a 31-storey block commissioned by the Greater London Council and completed in 1972. The building is admired for its bold silhouette, with precast access bridges every third floor linking the service tower and lift to the main block, and its bush-hammered concrete frame.
The ground floor of Trellick Tower houses The Goldfinger Factory, a social enterprise which offers a teaching academy for woodworking and craft alongside a sustainable design business. Next door is the much loved local Sicilian restaurant Panella. Laylow, Lisboa, Pizza East, the Golborne Fisheries and the antique shops and markets of Golborne Road are all a stone’s throw from the front door alongside the restaurants, boutiques and bars of Portobello Road and Notting Hill.
Meanwhile Gardens, a community garden established in 1976, lies at the foot of Trellick Tower, connecting with the canal. A short walk or cycle down the canal leads to Little Venice, Paddington and Hyde Park beyond. Westbourne Park Underground station (Hammersmith & City Line) is around seven minutes’ walk. The area also has good bus links, and the A40 Westway offers a convenient road link to the West. Trellick Tower falls is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which allows resident to enjoy Borough wide parking. The current residents, who work in Central London, drive to Baywater and walk through Hyde Park to work each day.
Please note: A major works bill of approximately £34,000 will be payable following the recent major works to the building.
Tenure: Leasehold
Lease Length: approx. 91 years
Service Charge: approx. £3,000 per annum (includes heating, concierge, maintenance and cleaning of communal areas and the communal garden)
Ground Rent: approx. £10 per annum
Please note that all areas, measurements and distances given in these particulars are approximate and rounded. The text, photographs and floor plans are for general guidance only. The Modern House has not tested any services, appliances or specific fittings — prospective purchasers are advised to inspect the property themselves. All fixtures, fittings and furniture not specifically itemised within these particulars are deemed removable by the vendor.
History
‘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 32nd and 33rd 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.
