4 June 2015
Towering Over Us
by J R Thomas
The news that Anthony Horowitz has being given permission by the Ian Fleming estate to write a sequel to “Goldfinger”, perhaps the towering height of the James Bond book and film franchise, draws remembrance of another towering Goldfinger – Erno, the modernist architect of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Fleming made (Auric) Goldfinger the name of his villain after Fleming and (Erno) Goldfinger fell into dispute over Goldfinger’s replacement of a row of period cottages in Hampstead with what now seems a surprisingly quiet and well-mannered short terrace of brick houses.
Goldfinger – Erno, that is – has become a sort of hero to modern residential developers. His most famous and most visible legacy is the two great towers he designed to book-end central London: Trellick Tower, off Ladbroke Grove in west London; and Balfron Tower, in Bow in the East End. These two almost identical towers, 31 and 27 floors high, were a new way of residential living for London, two terraced streets of concrete upended, with expansive outlooks and modern fast lifts. Goldfinger was the epitome of the post-war modernist architect, designing for the new world socialist utopia of which he saw himself as the enabler in concrete, new housing for the masses, sweeping views and fitted kitchens for all. For these were flats for council tenants, not for the middle classes, to be rented to families who would form new open communities in beehives in the sky. It was social engineering in what we now call social housing. His towers were well built; thick walls for noise suppression, plenty of lifts, balconies for taking the fresh air (foresight indeed, given London’s appalling smogs at the time), large rooms for family living.
The City of London Corporation followed this lead in the Barbican with the three tallest residential towers in Europe, a brave attempt to provide cheap housing for low paid City workers, and built almost regardless of expense to remarkable standards. Sadly, a whole clutch of cheap copies of these early examples were quick to follow, with shoddy construction, small rooms, minimal sound and temperature insulation, and skimping of finishes generally.
In 1968 the construction of high rise living was brought to an abrupt and dramatic stop by the partial collapse of Ronan Point, a new block in Newham. But even by then it was obvious that the tower blocks were not working for their intended purposes. The inhabitants generally hated them and in particular they were unsuitable in the extreme for young families, a situation compounded by poor management of the buildings by the local authority owners. Controlled rents meant that there was not enough income to properly service the high running costs of tower buildings; and their unpopularity with the intended tenants meant that they were let to almost anybody who would live there. Most of the towers became centres for petty crime, poor quality homes for the poorest in society, enclaves for drug dealers and their clients. Sadly for Goldfinger’s reputation, his two towers became particularly notorious in these matters. And London went back to low rise living.
Although some towers were demolished, especially the worst built in east London, there was a change of sentiment in the 1980’s. What drove this was an unexpected by-product of the Thatcher government spending cuts and deregulation. As austerity hit the local councils, they looked at selling parts of their housing stock, “decanting” the tenants so as to sell with vacant possession. Several towers in improving locations passed to residential developers. With a makeover, recladding, new internal mechanicals and slick marketing, the towers went from hell to paradise. To young professionals, no children or pets, who wanted inner urban living, and could get highly leveraged mortgages, they were the dream apartments that Goldfinger and his fellow modernists had sketched out thirty years before.
Other towers in less desirable locations were transferred to Housing Associations who, better funded than the local authority vendors, and with the aid of rising rents, now part deregulated and moving towards alignment with open market rents, were able to improve their stock and more vigorously manage the tenant mix to get the sort of residents who would enjoy their high rise homes and behave nicely.
By the turn of the century high rise living was becoming fashionable again. To governments struggling to provide enough housing for booming London, and especially to the new Mayor, Ken Livingstone, anxious to project the image of London hipness, residential towers were the solution.
And the economics had moved on, too. Improvements in building technology made towers economic and quick to build and cheaper to operate, with mechanical and electrical systems of higher capacity and reliability.
The effect of this can be seen by going to the top of Tower 42 and looking around. New towers, formerly contained in the confines of the City of London as offices for those pesky bankers, have escaped and are striding across the whole London horizon. The casual observer must wonder if there are any planning controls at all as to where towers may be built. And the truth is, apart from the ten sacred ley lines that protect views of St Pauls, there almost aren’t.
Currently there are 268 towers (in this context buildings over 20 stories) for which planning permission has been given, but which have not yet completed (or even started) construction. Most of those are residential, and most of them will be built; the recovering residential market in London makes that pretty certain. And they are popular. Anything over the fifth or sixth floor starts to command a premium, and a well specified penthouse is a valuable thing indeed. The young affluent professional is still the most likely buyer, and there is as strong a market in renting the flats as buying them among this group, appreciating the benefits of fast city living but comfortably raised above it. (As one developer said “The drug dealers still come to the high rises, but now they dress as smart as their clients. They go up in the express lifts and do business over a glass of bourbon.”) There are other more surprising residents though – increasingly the neighbours may well be a retired couple who have sold their big house in the suburbs and relish the lower maintenance lifestyle of an apartment. After all, with London spread below, who wants to bother with a garden?
Most remarkably, Goldfinger is back in favour as well. Not just with architects and developers for his mould-breaking example of piling it high, but even with those who live in his two pioneering towers. Trellick Tower, in what is now super cool Ladbroke Grove, has been refurbished, its lifts replaced, all modcons introduced and is now THE place to live in Ladbroke Grove – but remarkably is still social housing, highly sought after. Balfron has not quite acquired that status yet, the part of east London in which it sits being on the edge of edgy still, but it is on its way. The block belongs to Poplar HARCA, a housing association, who have ejected its tenants and entered into an agreement with a private developer to refurbish the building to the requirements of English Heritage. The National Trust has redecorated flat 130 (here Goldfinger himself lived – for two months); tours are available. An artist’s community is resident in some flats and uses a flat as a gallery. No social housing here, all the flats are to be sold.
Perception is everything in high rise London housing – not what is perceived from the 24th floor balcony, but what the market perceives. Presented correctly, high rise sells at astonishing prices, though not those in some of the old social housing blocks, where the residents would still trade their views to be at ground level with a garden and the car by the front door. Those blocks are still not desirable places to live – used for temporary housing of immigrants and the socially disadvantaged, badly maintained and desperately in need of capital injections to bring the services up to modern standards. In time that will come, but not for the present inhabitants – though they may well achieve their low-level dreams as the gentrification bandwagon arrives. It will be the private sector that shows what rooms with a view can really be worth.
