High living sampled by architect, Daily Telegraph, Friday February 23, 1968
After six days of life high above the East End, Mr Goldfinger said: “I am enjoying this no end. I would love to live here.”

He said he had found only a few snags, and his first week had confirmed his view that tall blocks with open spaces were the “ideal of the moment”.

“I have wanted to build this for 30 years,” he added. “It will help bring the countryside to London.”

He said the flats had been designed specifically for families with small children. Each flat has a balcony and windows that can be locked.

 

Goldfinger pays his full whack at the top, Walter Partington, Daily Express, Friday February 23 1968
Mrs. Pam Ellis is living in her new Greater London Council flat from necessity. So are 144 other families most of them paying an wavering subsidised rent of £4 15s. 6d., who live in the £1 million block, officially opened yesterday.

Mrs. Lilian Davies, at No. 98, is paying £4 17s. for a two-bedroom flat. Total income of herself, her husband and 21-year-old son: about £27.

She said: “I don’t think anybody here is paying the full economic rent.”

Under the GLC policy only tenants who can afford it pay full rents.

Said Hungarian-born Mr. Goldfinger: “Families will spend most of their lives in the flats I design. I must do everything possible to iron out any problems.”

 

Finding the high life in Poplar, The Guardian, 14/2/68
Mr Goldfinger wants to get “the feel” of living in the building he designed for London’s East Enders. “I want to experience, at first-hand, the sizr of the rooms, the amenities provided, the time it takes to obtain a lift, the amount of wind whistling around the tower, and any problems which might arise from my designs so that I can correct them in the future.” he said in a GLC press release. “I feel it will be an invaluable exercise from which I and future tenants, will certainly gain a great deal.”

Not all architects and sociologists share Mr Goldfinger’s longing for flats, when they are intended for families with children and come in tower block form. Not all tenants of the GLC tower blocks would prefer elevated multi-storey living compared with, say, a Hampstead terrace.

 

East End’s tallest block of flats make ‘ideal homes’, East London Advertiser, 1/3/68
“I would like to live here permanently,” he said. “I have found nothing that will make me alter any of my future designs.”

“The sound proofing here is perfect. This, of course, is helped by my having put all noisy machinery, such as lifts and the waste disposal unit, in a separate tower.”

“These flats are really my idea of ideal homes.”

Although Mr. Goldfinger is pleased with his flats, some local people have criticised tall blocks, saying they have destroyed the East End community spirit.

But the architect dismissed this as “rubbish.” He said: “I have created here nine separate streets on nine different levels, all with their own rows of front doors.”

“The people living here can sit on their doorstep and chat to the people next door if they want to. A community spirit is still possible even in these tall blocks, and any criticism that it isn’t is just rubbish.”

He went on: “These tall blocks are wonderful, in as much as they enable us to bring the countryside into the towns.”

“If we build up instead of out we have enough room for green spaces, lawns and trees, where children can play.”

“And if any of the mothers do not want to let their children down to ground level to play, there are playrooms in the corridors connecting the flat block and the block containing the noisy equipment.”

 

Evening Standard Reporter, 13/2/68
Architect Mr Erno Goldfinger is to “sample his own cooking” by becoming a tenant for about two months in a skyscraper block of flats he designed for the Greater London Council.
Mr Plummer said: “Mr. Goldfinger told me he thought it would be advantageous in his future designs if he could live for a few weeks in one of the flats, so I invited him to move in.”

 

Architect sounds out his tenants, David Winder, The Christian Science Monitor, Monday, June 17, 1968
A London architect has given tenants of his new high-rise apartment building a change to take any complaints straight to the top.

Dissatisfied residents of Balfron Towers in London’s East End may take their complaints to architect Erno Goldfinger’s 25th-floor eyrie. If the problem can be solved, he would do something about it.

For two months Mr and Mrs Goldfinger lived in the apartment building. Partly they wanted to find out what technical faults were built into the apartments that could be eliminated from future designs.

But their stay was also a sociological experience. It was an attempt to see whether criticism that high-rise buildings were impersonal and unsuitable (especially for families with young children) were justified.

Was the experience as he expected it, the architect was asked? “Better than I expected,” he replied. “There is so much nonsense about becoming unsettled in these places,” Mr Goldfinger said. On the contrary, many of the tenants, he said, had made more friends here than in their previous neighbourhood.

Mr Goldfinger favours high-rise density in cities because it helps cut down the inflow of traffic from suburban areas.

“I am also very opposed to cities eating up the countryside. By creating green spaces around these high-rise buildings we can see that the country comes into the city,” he said.

As for mechanical complaints, nearly every day during the Goldfinger’s vigil some one of the 106 families - mostly former slum residents - in the 26 story building complained.

Two elevators were inadequate for such a vast building, cried the tenants, especially if one was out of use.

No electric doorbells were fitted, and air vents had to be blocked because they collected dust and let in drafts, other tenants lamented.

Some of the complaints could not be met. But Mr. Goldfinger gained a wealth of information for the next building he designs.

Take those elevators, for instance. He won’t try putting in any more two-elevator systems in very large complexes. Then there were the medal strips fitted around window frames to keep out the draft. “At high winds they rattled terribly,” said Mr. Goldfinger.

But just listen to the tenants’ reaction: John MacDonald, a postoffice employee, said, “I live on the 25th floor, but you couldn’t drag my wife and me out of the place now even though we lived on the ground floor before.”

Harry Smith, a production manager at a local factory, said “I’m one whose central heating isn’t working… There’s also very bad workmanship, but the kitchen is well thought out and the balcony is safe - children can toddle about easily.”

Patrick Hayden, a docker and father of two young children, said, “Despite what people keep on saying about high-rise buildings we like them.”

What then has the Greater London Council learned from Mr. Goldfinger’s experiment?

According to Desmond Plummer, leader the GLC, it is that “high buildings do provide decent living conditions and that, depite the fact that some people don’t like them, there are a number of people who do. And this particularly goes for people with young toddlers.”

Mr. Goldfinger’s findings are expected to influence the GLC in its redevelopment of London’s old dock area.

 

High life of splendid isolation, Jean Stead, The Guardian, Wednesday May 18 1968​
Life at the top is all bliss to Mr Erno Goldfinger, who has just been enjoying an experimental stay in the 25-floor block he built in the East End for the Greater London Council. His wife would have liked to live in one for ever, she said yesterday.

But they have now returned from all that windy isolation to the snug environment of Hampstead. Nor do the Goldfingers intend to live in a high flat - because, says Mrs Goldfinger: “We aren’t eligible tenants for this one and there isn’t a private one built by my husband.”

In spite of Mr Goldfinger’s ruthless, James Bondish name, there seems to be justice in his wife’s faith in his powers to make tower-block living reasonably happy.

“I advocate high density, high living in London to cut traffic and transport,” he says brushing aside all those “muddle-headed” colleagues who have a feeling that people like their own front doors, to open into the garden.

“Contrary to what the tower planning advocates, the garden city enthusiasts say, I think it isn’t the answer for London to spread out everywhere.”

Mr Harry Smith, a production manager, at a factory near by, likes living on the 25th floor. He said yesterday: “I was making 17-mile journeys every day. I used to be exhausted. Now I’m two minutes from work and I feel marvellous.”

But there are more reasons than good views for liking life at the top. Enough of all that talk about children making friends in the community play centre and women chatting on the balconies. “I like the isolation,” said Mr Smith, simply “We have four grandchildren and spend a lot of time with them. This flat is ideal for getting away.”

 

Architect with his head in the clouds, Letters to the Editor, The Guardian Manchester, Saturday February 17 1968
Sir, - 
I was astonished to read on Wednesday of the proposal by Erno Goldfinger to spend a few weeks on the top floor of a 26-storey block of flats in Poplar, designed by himself, for what is called a “sociological experiment.”
Whom is he trying to fool - himself of us? Does he really think anything of sociological value can be gained in a few weeks? It would take an energetic child that time to get over the novelty of looking down on the world from 200ft. up before he realised that he would be physically separated from it.
Does the GLC really have to build this block to find out how long a person will wait for a lift, the effects of the wind, or the layout of the rooms? I do not think so.
Mr Goldfinger will gain little from his experiment other than a short holiday, like a foreign traveller staying at the top of the London Hilton. Why can’t the sociologists, in preference to the architects, ask the families who have already spent several years in high blocks of flats and are likely to remain there for many years to come? Does Mr Goldfinger really think that his perception of living is so much finer that a few weeks for him can sum up a lifetime for others” -
Yours faithfully. 
Alan K Fox 7 Chapel Market, London N1

Sir, -
It does seem extraordinary that we can still go on building 26-storey blocks of flats such as the Poplar one recently shown in the “Guardian.” “Warehouses for storing human beings” was a term used not so long ago by an architectural critic for a similar housing scheme. It seems apt. The regrettable thing is that designers and town-planners should have so lost sight of ordinary human values and basic common sense that they could ever have imagined that a family could have live happily in monsters such as the Poplar block.
The main reason for this, I suggest, is that most housing designers today design for “them” - creatures from another planet - seldom for themselves. It can all be done from the safety of a terraced house in Hampstead. And, of course, the old East End terraces - with all their horrors and lack of plumbing - offered more conviviality and less restrictions than the modern tower.
Also it is now known that a tower is not the only answer to high-density urban living. Children always have needed to run about in the open on the ground. They always will. And parents have always liked to be somewhere near in control. They always will. In spite of all the town-planning jargon and the density figures. -
Yours faithfully,
George Perkin 7 Archway Street. London SW 13 

 

High Flats, Letters to the Editor, The Guardian Manchester, Wednesday February 21 1968
Sir, - 
May I assure Mr Alan K Fox that I do not intend to fool him and his friends, the public at large or myself. I simply try to check, pragmatically, if the solution of my brief has, in fact, been successful. The architect’s job is to implement the sociologist’s brief. He builds the houses in which not one but several generations of people will spend a lifetime. He obviously has to have “a perception of living” equal to his job,
As to Mr Fox’s question if the GLC has “to build… to find out about wind,” “layout” etc. - this is simply putting the cart before the horse. His remarks about the power of perception of children are very unjust to children. To reassure himself, he should talk to the people who live in dwellings I have designed and not just theories in vacuo.
Mr George Perkin has obviously not seen the “monster” in Poplar. Had he done so, he would have realised that 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 -
Yours faithfully.
Ernö Goldfinger 69 Piccadilly, London W 1