Trellick Tower

Towering over Golborne Road, the famous Trellick Tower has become a much talked about landmark, loved and loathed in equal measure but protected from any wrecking ball by its Grade II status. A prime example of the brutalist architecture favoured in the sixties, Trellick Tower has experienced all the social problems that have come to be associated with high rise concrete blocks. But despite all that it still stands tall today. The design is down to Erno Goldfinger - if he sounds like some villain out of a Bond movie, that's because he is; author Ian Flemming named one of his characters after the architect. Not suprisingly, Goldfinger was none too happy. Regardless of what Flemming thought of him, Goldfinger the architect made several important impacts on the London landscape, designing the often reviled Alexander Fleming House (now known as Metro Central Heights) at Elephant and Castle, and Balfron Tower in Tower Hamlets - a design he used and improved on for the Trellick Tower. The modernist home he designed for himself and his family at 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, is owned by the National Trust and open to the public on limited days only.