Trellick Tower

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Trellick Tower as seen from Golborne Road

The Trellick Tower is a 31-story skyscraper in the western London borough of North Kensington. The 98 meter high residential complex not far from the bank of Regent's Canal was built according to plans by the architect Ernő Goldfinger in the brutalist style . It was built between 1968 and 1972, was the tallest residential building in the United Kingdom in the year it was built, and was also one of the tallest structures in London in the 2010s . Together with the antennas installed on the roof, the structure is 120 meters high. The building is a listed building and belongs to the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest grade II *.

history

View of the service tower of the Trellick Tower

The architecture of the Trellick Tower is based heavily on the Balfron Tower, also designed by Goldfinger . The structure also has similarities to the Anniesland Court residential high- rise in Glasgow , which was completed in 1968 and designed by J. Holmes & Partners. The Trellick Tower was completed in April 1972. It is considered one of the most important buildings of brutalism worldwide .

In the 1970s, such structures went out of fashion and the Trellick Tower developed into a social hotspot. Various reports of rape in elevators, homeless people who had settled, or children being attacked by drug addicts brought the Trellick Tower into disrepute. Dangerous situations arose more frequently, especially in the underground car park. At Christmas 1972, vandals opened a fire hydrant on the 12th floor and flooded the elevator shaft. The electricity and heating went out for several days. The rainbow press regularly dubbed the residential complex as "The Tower of Terror" ("Tower of Terror"). After the tenants had put pressure on the housing company, some measures were taken in October 1984 to increase security and security . The house got a caretaker and an intercom . As a result, however, rental and property prices rose. The Trellick Tower is considered the tallest residential building in Europe that was built as part of social housing .

In June 1982, the English base jumper Francis Donellan was killed jumping from the roof of the Trellick Tower when his parachute did not open. From 1978 to 1983, the radio station Thameside Radio broadcast as a pirate station between two floors of the high-rise building out of a shaft. However, the authorities were never able to trace the transmitter. In December 1989, a 28 meter high antenna mast was installed on the roof to improve the transmission power of television programs. The BBC and Ofcom operate the transmitter under the name Kensal Town .

On December 22, 1998, the residential tower was included by the English Heritage in the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest grade II *. With the late architectural recognition, the prices for the apartments continued to rise. In September 2007 a one bedroom apartment cost £ 250,000 and a three bedroom apartment cost £ 465,000. Over the years, the Trellick Tower developed from a hated concrete block into a landmark and - not least because of its presence in the media and art and culture - into a coveted cult object. It is now considered a monument to the revitalized modernity .

Description and architecture

detail

The Trellick Tower is relatively thin for its height. Its most distinctive element is a separate service tower in which the elevator system, the stairwell and waste chutes are located. With the exception of the upper floors, three floors are served by the two elevators: the floor of the stop and one floor above and one below. The tower is connected to the main building via ten skyways . At the top of the service tower protrudes from a glazed room that used to be a boiler room. This construction method of placing the boiler and the hot water storage tank at the top of the tower made pumps almost superfluous and also reduced the number of pipelines required, which in turn reduced heat loss and thus increased efficiency . The 1973 oil crisis ensured that the originally existing oil heating was no longer used despite these advantages, so that the house has been heated by electric heating since then . The boiler room is no longer used and is therefore empty. The municipal council rejected a building application to convert this room into a penthouse apartment. The facade of the service tower is dominated by very narrow, stair-shaped windows.

The house houses a total of 219 apartments in nine different designs, including eleven maisonette apartments . Each of the apartments has its own balcony. What was particularly progressive for the time was that Goldfinger already considered double-glazed windows as sound insulation in the planning phase . The simple geometry of the architecture follows a special aspect ratio and a corresponding lattice structure in order to achieve more optical harmony. This also means that Goldfinger had the residential high-rise lower than the service tower - in contrast to the earlier project of the Balfron Tower. The facade of the house is characterized by balconies of different lengths and creates a graphic pattern of rectangles. The facade itself consists of exposed aggregate concrete panels, the joints of which also create a pattern. The building corners and the underside of the balconies are rounded. In the small and narrow foyer of the Trellick Tower, colorful glass blocks are set in concrete.

Originally, the house was supposed to be a Unité d'Habitation modeled on Le Corbusier and also to house shops and medical practices. However, the concept was rejected again in favor of a purely residential complex.

Trellick Tower in Art and Culture

The novella High-Rise by British science fiction author James Graham Ballard from 1975, the last part of the trilogy after Crash in 1973 and Concrete Island from 1974, describes a community of 2,000 people living in a 40-story high-rise in Living in London. Many of the descriptions in the story refer to the features of the Trellick Tower, for example the particular height of the house, the facade, the balconies and the general appearance of the “concrete landscape”. Ballard describes the tower as an "architectural building for war".

In the episode The Madness of Mickey Hamilton from the British crime series The Professionals , the title character portrayed by Ian McDiarmid lives on the top floor of the Trellick Tower. Upon entering the building, George Cowley commented: "I think I would go nuts too if I had to live in a house like this."

The Trellick Tower appears in music videos on songs such as: For Tomorrow by Blur , Kingdom of Doom by Damon Albarn , I Shall Overcome by Hard-Fi , Tomorrow Comes Today by Gorillaz , Little 15 by Depeche Mode and No Lie by Sean Paul . The Swedish music producer Kleerup published the album Hello Holla EP in 2008 , in which he called a piece Tower of Trellick .

In addition, the Trellick Tower was also the setting in numerous international films. The high-rise appears in the film For Queen and Fatherland with Bruce Payne and Denzel Washington as well as in the film Shopping with Jude Law or in the film Gangster No. 1 with Malcolm McDowell , as well as in the thriller Blitz - Cop-Killer vs. Killer cop with Jason Statham. Most recently he can be seen in the children's film Paddington from 2014, with both indoor and outdoor shots of the hallway.

literature

  • The architects' journal , London January 19, 1973, ISSN  0003-8466 , pp. 21-9 (English).
  • The architects' journal , London November 23, 1987, ISSN  0003-8466 , pp. 28-9.
  • James Dunnett: The architects' journal , London November 20, 1997, ISSN  0003-8466 , pp. 32-8.
  • Jörn Ebner: … getting on in years. Balfron Tower, 1963–65; Trellick Tower, 1966–72 . In: Deutsche Bauzeitung , Volume 136, ISSN  0721-1902 , Konradin Medien, Leinfelden-Echterdingen 2002, pp. 80–84 (English).
  • Jonathan Glancey: Architecture of the World . Famous buildings from 1900 to today. Bucher, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3765816390 , p. 244.
  • Herbert Wright: London High . Frances Lincoln, London 2006, ISBN 978-0-7112-2695-1 , pp. 95-98 (English).

Web links

Commons : Trellick Tower  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ emporis.com: High-rise Buildings in London , accessed on May 10, 2010
  2. ↑ skyscrapernews.com: Trellick Tower
  3. ^ Wright: London high , p. 95.
  4. ↑ a b c housingprototypes.org: Trellick Tower
  5. ↑ emporis.com: Trellick Tower
  6. ↑ Der Spiegel : Volkssport für Verrückte , August 9, 1982.
  7. ↑ Thameside Radio 90.2: State of the art broadcasting technology
  8. ↑ UK Broadcast Transmission: Kensal Town
  9. ↑ National Monuments Record: Trellick Tower
  10. ↑ 25by4.channel4.com: Goldfinger's Lair  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , from Daisy Leitch@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / 25by4.channel4.com  
  11. ↑ Homes: Streets of London ( Memento of the original from February 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 3.3 MB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.helenjennings.co.uk
  12. ↑ open2.net Trellick Tower
  13. ^ Goode, Anderson, Wilson: The Oxford companion to architecture , Oxford University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0198605683 , p. 372.
  14. ↑ Donald Short: High-rise: Goldfinger versus George Lansbury ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.donaldshort.co.uk

Coordinates: 51 ° 31 '25.6 "  N , 0 ° 12' 19.8"  W.