Trellick Tower Building Sights

BBC

Four Collections -

archive programmes chosen by experts.

For this collection, Janet Street-Porter has selected

programmes about post-war architecture.

More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four Collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

WHIRRING

This

is the view from my window.

Classic picture postcard stuff, capital city.

It makes me angry to see what they've done with it.

In a timid gesture

to preserve

the view of St Paul's

we get a dismembered dome on a base of spec-built offices.

So much for sensitive low-rise

development.

I always think, if someone had had the nerve to turn all those buildings

on their side, and make a

decent tower...

THIS is a tower, and

no-one could

call Trellick Tower a timid building.

Trellick Tower is bold

because it confronts issues

about living in the modern city.

It's a building with strong ideas and determined to hold its own.

You can tell that it won't be

compromised.

The

architect, Erno Goldfinger,

was a committed modernist.

He understood the city.

He understood that the infrastructure of roads and rail

are as much a part of the city as

its people.

He understood its density. And he built an urban building.

The tower block was a positive response to

the city,

to rise above the pollution and noise and to free more of the available

land for open space,

for parks and pedestrians.

This is the point that you always seem to

get interrupted by,

"Yeah, but what about people with kids?"

Well, I understand that the British are firmly rooted

to the earth

and can entertain the notion that children need a garden.

But why can't you have roots in

the sky?

I grew up on the 23rd floor of a New York apartment building

and, OK, so I didn't watch too many flowers grow,

but I used to see the Queen Mary come into port.

Is my understanding of the universe any less for

the experience?

The primary Corbusian justification for high-rise living,

to provide sun,

space and greenery, is handled both monumentally and sensitively.

The lift tower

is detached from

the building but connected by bridges

at every third floor and crowned by the boiler room.

This physically isolates

the noisy services like lift, heating

and rubbish collection from the flats.

It's definitely very dramatic.

At one point

you're enclosed in

a stainless steel box in a concrete shaft,

and then the next moment you virtually explode into

the natural light of the corridors

and bridges.

The

flats are more

like houses in the air.

You come off the high-rise street into a spacious hall with stairs.

No sign of a corridor, which you might have expected.

You immediately notice the light flooding in from

both sides of the flat. It really is remarkably bright.

This is partly because we're so high up,

and also because of Goldfinger's inspired plan.

And this is a clever detail.

Light switches incorporated

into the steel door frame.

Mark of a man who obviously loved design.

And again, that view.

We're on the 21st floor now and the scale becomes

more intimate.

You feel closer to people on the streets,

but unlike a ground-level house, there's no need for curtains.

They can't see you.

Well, no Queen Mary, but we do have the Royal Horse Artillery.

Look at this almost rustic feature.

You can open the top of the stable doors

in the kitchen, watch

the

children playing on the balcony

at the same time you're cooking dinner.

I'm sure

some parents are gasping

in horror at the thought of it.

One thing Goldfinger didn't want to see on the balconies was

washing.

He was a modernist, after all, and to pre-empt this insult,

three launderettes were located in

the lift tower.

These were some of a range of communal facilities

offered on the site.

Others included a club room,

nursery

school and a doctor's surgery.

This used to be a launderette.

Launderettes,

for instance, make good

community centres, places to chat

while you wait for a drier.

I remember coming here years ago to a going-away party given by

some

friends who lived in the flats.

There were oysters and champagne lying on crushed ice on the driers.

Never would have happened at Dot Cotton's.

The place has been closed for some years now.

They had problems with vandals.

Trellick Tower has not been immune from problems.

You can choose your villain - the architect, the people who live here,

the management. But I think it's

a problem of interpretation.

The tower block has become the metaphor

for the ills of modern society

and the hazards of urban living.

It's too easy to put in some ominous clouds

to paint shadows on every landing.

And yet the same idea, the tower block,

can be portrayed romantically.

But I think that the real threat has been an inability to

accept urbanism.

You have to be bold and believe to make it work.

From here, on one of the pulpit balconies,

I can appropriate a bit of the city.

And yet, as an individual, I know I'm part of something much larger.

I can celebrate the mass of humanity, even in concrete.

It isn't easy living in a city.

It's a difficult leap

from

an individual - one -

to be one in ten million. It's all about finding one's place.

I think Trellick Tower is a great building

because

it has a clear idea

of its place in the city, its roots,

and a vision of how we might live there.

Then it's up to us as individuals.

It's not an easy building, but then, who says architecture should be easy?