Trellick Tower Art Print Poster

A Trellick Sunset.

Goldfinger's design is based on his earlier and slightly smaller Balfron Tower (in Poplar, east London), and is in effect a sibling building.

The tower was completed at a time when high-rise tower blocks were going out of fashion as local authorities were beginning to realise the social problems they caused. It was said to have inspired JG Ballard's novel, High Rise, in which residents collapse into anarchy and wage war on each other's floors. A destiny of desolation and demolition seemed inevitable. Although Wendy who runs a bookshop in the city, and a resident of the Barbican insists that the novel is more reflective of life in the Barbican Estate!

Something unexpected, something astonishing, has happened. Trellick has clawed out of the abyss. Against all the odds, it has hewn a renaissance from the concrete. Crime and disorder have virtually evaporated. Lifts glide, boilers hum, management works.

Tenants adore it, Blur sing about it, directors and advertisers film it, T-shirt designers transpose it, architects study it, coach-loads of tourists photograph it. Trellick's transformation is the closest urban renewal gets to fairytale - one which planners hope will become a model for Britain. It is a story of a flawed ideal, a vilified architect, a doomed vision and tenants who refused to give up. Above all, it's a story of the fickleness of fashion.

Sold unframed.