John Avery
Urban Icons
Nigel Warburton: Ernő Goldfinger-The Life of an Architect.
New York-London, Routledge, 2003, 216 pp.
The Hungarian born architect Ernő Goldfinger, who lived and worked in London for over 50 years, has received renewed interest and admiration since his death in 1987. After years of decay, his buildings are being rediscovered as
fashionable urban icons. Goldfinger's
own house is now a tourist attraction. Goldfinger the man, through his legendary force of character, powerful built work and his extraordinary life, has acquired cult status amongst architects. After all, in a profession which needs and breeds big egos, the man who gave his name to James Bond's most notorious foe deserves some serious respect.
Nigel Warburton's new biography Ernő Goldfinger-The Life of an Architect is the first book to review Goldfinger's career in depth, and it is appropriate that it focuses as much on the man as on his buildings. During his years of practice in London, Goldfinger developed a formidable, and enduring, reputation. Young designers worked in his fearfully exacting office for love, or perhaps curiosity, rather than money. Goldfinger rarely wasted time sweet talking his clients, and his fees were not negotiable; indeed on one occasion an American executive who sought to change Goldfinger's design was literally carried from the office by his shirt collar. Combining an impeccable, avant-garde modernist pedigree with his formal classical education, Goldfinger was able to present himself as a progressive master architect, fiercely rigorous as well as fashionable, at ease with the discourse of the creative set which he inhabited during his formative years in Paris.
Born in 1902, Ernő Goldfinger's early childhood was spent within a comfortable household at Szászrégen in the Southern Carpathians. His father was a wealthy lawyer, and both parents had family holdings in forests and sawmills-a privileged, capitalist background which, in a typically rebellious gesture, Ernő repaid through a lifelong devotion to Marxism. Moving to Budapest in 1908 to begin his education, the young Goldfinger experienced the turbulent final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, finally leaving Hungary with his family in 1919. In 1920, an educational holiday to Paris captivated him; in his own words, he 'went for a fortnight and stayed fourteen years.' Through his cousin, Hélene Bernheim, Goldfinger met influential figures in the architectural, artistic and literary avant-garde. Developing an interest aroused early on by his parents' reconstruction of their villa on Mount Gellért, he decided to set out on the lengthy architectural training at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The traditional Beaux-Arts education gave Goldfinger foundations in the exacting, timeless craftsmanship of architecture in the neo-classical style. After two years of the process, however, his attitudes were transformed by Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture. Along with a group of fellow students, he rejected "the pompous projects. with names like a 'Governor's Palace in Annam' or a 'French Embassy in Central America' [which] were just so many exercises in the application of the orders". A breakaway studio was formed under Auguste Perret, an architect of modern, highly engineered structures in reinforced concrete; Goldfinger's progress in the Beaux-Arts system came to a standstill, and his formation as a modernist architect began in earnest.
Between 1923 and 1933 Goldfinger enjoyed a remarkable decade learning, working and fraternising amongst the progenitors of modernism. He associated with the likes of Walter Gropius, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Lee Miller, Pierre Jeanneret, Alexander Calder, Georges Braque, John Cage, Oskar Kokoschka and Adolf Loos. Within this circle, Goldfinger continued to develop as a designer. Early work included a film set for the Delaunays, interior design for Dick Wyndham and a chair for Lee Miller. Of particular note was his early
design for a cosmetics showroom in London's Mayfair. Stubbornly, Goldfinger forced through a starkly modern design which was to the taste of neither of his client, Helena Rubinstein, nor of her customers, nor indeed of the builders who tried to add decorative touches to Goldfinger's drawings in the belief that he must have accidentally forgotten them. Although he struggled even to be paid for the project, Goldfinger succeeded in building 'the first modern shop in London' with a fully glazed façade which is today's standard treatment.
In 1933, Goldfinger helped to organise the legendary Congres International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) aboard a cruise ship in the Mediterranean. This event, bringing together over one hundred leading architects, designers and artists sought to further the cause of modernism and published the so-called 'Athens Charter'. In my experience as a student of architecture, the congress is generally acknowledged as a significant moment in the history of modernism. According to Nigel Warburton, however, Goldfinger found it "perfectly disorganised" and entirely unproductive, although it appears to have been a useful networking opportunity.
As he completed his architectural training, Goldfinger's life changed more permanently with marriage to Ursula Blackwell, a British heiress. In light of the worsening political and economic situation in Europe, the Goldfingers moved permanently to London in 1934, where they lived in Berthold Lubetkin's new apartment building, Highpoint 1, in Highgate, north London. Interestingly, despite a grudging admiration for Highpoint, Goldfinger was apparently never close to Lubetkin, a contemporary who had also studied at the Perret studio in Paris. Lubetkin was the more successful architect during his early years in Britain, and Goldfinger appears to have been suspicious of his allegedly devious character. This background colour sets Nigel Warburton's biography apart from a straightforward architectural monograph, and it is a story within a story that perhaps merits further exploration.
Goldfinger's main focus from 1936, until its completion in 1939, was the construction of his own house at Lawn Road in Hampstead. Funded by money from his wife's inheritance, Goldfinger was able to purchase a delightful site overlooking Hampstead Heath and drew up plans for a block of three modern houses; through Ursula's family money, he was fortunate enough to follow his own maxim that "a young architect ought to be made to build his own house first . and at his own expense!" This was in many ways a hugely educational project for Goldfinger, not least in his struggle with local conservationists, who felt his modern, concrete houses would spoil the neighbourhood. Although he defeated the opposition, the episode served as a premonition of the controversy which surrounded some of his later work. An intriguing, individual design mixing the British terraced house with a modern, concrete framed apartment building, the houses at Lawn Road are finely detailed in brick, concrete, timber and steel. They combine extensively glazed walls with framed picture windows, orthogonal rationalism with lyrical spiral staircases and, in the living space on the first floor a flexible, open plan space which echoes Rietveld's upper floor at the Schroder House and prefigures the
modern fashion for open plan living. This 'Piano Nobile', facilitated by Felix Samuely's structural design, can be transformed by folding walls from a study, dining and living room into a single space with views to the garden and the Heath, and it became central to the Goldfingers' life. In 1942 the room provided a venue for the remarkable exhibition Aid to Russia, for which the Goldfingers assembled work by Arp, Epstein, Ernst, Hepworth, Klee, Leger, Miro, Moore, Nicholson, Penrose, Piper, Schwitters and others. The exhibition was widely reviewed, with praise reserved not just for the work on display but for the setting itself. In the midst of the second World War, with their two children evacuated to Canada, it must have been hugely satisfying for the Goldfingers to open their house, virtually brand new, to many hundreds of appreciative visitors alongside such a remarkable collection of art. The event is perhaps an indication of the kind of critical and popular success which might have been more common had the war not intervened.
Aside from a period spent with the slightly shambolic Industrial Camouflage Unit (run by a group of surrealists!), Goldfinger's design work was limited by the war. This left time to write a series of theoretical essays, which alongside his built work, form the clearest statement
of Goldfinger's architectural manifesto. Defining architecture as the enclosure of space, which through its disposition creates a psychological effect, he argued that each element of a building's interior contributes to a multi-sensory, emotional effect and these combine to create the 'sensation' of a space. This was offset by a more distant, abstract appreciation of a building's exterior as plastic form, appreciated through the play of light and massing of volumes. Set against this phenomenological analysis of the experience of architecture, Goldfinger's view of a building's purpose was "to fulfil a social function with the best means of an up-to-date technology". This contrast of metaphysical and practical is a recurring theme in Goldfinger's work, reflecting his earlier exposure to the spiritual, utopian thesis proposed by Le Corbusier alongside Perret's focus on the moral value of rational, efficient, expressed construction. In a way, Goldfinger can be seen as a kind of bridge between early modernism and the evolution of rationalist, megastructural and ultimately high-tech, construction and engineering-led architecture.
During the period of post-war reconstruction Goldfinger was able to increase his workload, although he often struggled to have his work accepted by town planners. Whilst applications to build 'mock Tudor' houses were accepted without question, the 'alien' forms and materials, which Goldfinger was determined to use, routinely aroused suspicion. Ironically, despite this hostility, Goldfinger's key work of the mid 50s, a six-storey office building in Albemarle Street, was widely praised for being sympathetic to the Georgian streetscape through its proportion, rhythm and materials without being a slavish stylistic imitation. In the late 1950's, Goldfinger won his largest commission yet, to design Alexander Fleming House at the Elephant and Castle in south London. A major office development consisting of several large low and high-rise buildings linked with suspended bridges, the complex became the headquarters of the Ministry of Health. Goldfinger used this scheme to explore his language of geometrically sophisticated, rigorously proportioned concrete framed building, and it is his most formally ambitious work. Unfortunately, the offices were unpopular with early tenants, who suffered from leaks and poor heating, and the whole district became a byword for degraded, incoherent post-war reconstruction. Despite this, Alexander Fleming House has now been extensively refurbished and rebranded as 'Metro Central Heights', a fashionable residential development boasting swimming pool, gym and concierge facilities. Sadly, though, Goldfinger's nearby Odeon Cinema, often acknowledged as Britain's finest of the post-war period, was destroyed by developers in 1988.
Ernő Goldfinger's most distinctive and controversial buildings were developed during the 1960's, and brought together his lifelong interest in apartment buildings, high-rise structures and reinforced concrete construction. Balfron Tower in the East End of London and Trellick Tower in North Kensington were designed at the height of Britain's experiment with mass, high-rise social housing. Goldfinger's towers can be taken as the ultimate statement both of his character and of his architectural beliefs. Viewed from outside, they are incredibly muscular, masculine, abstract structures, with no concession to an architecture of domesticity. Indeed James Dunnett's analysis of Balfron Tower makes much of its warlike symbolism, describing the building as inspiring 'a delicate sense of terror'. By contrast the flats within both towers have often been praised for their light, spacious interiors, stunning views and good soundproofing. In order to prove his commitment to the buildings, Goldfinger and his wife moved into Balfron Tower for two months in 1968, holding champagne parties in their flat on the twenty-sixth floor in order to encourage a sense of community in the new 'streets in the sky', and becoming local celebrities in the process. At Trellick Tower, Goldfinger moved his office onto the estate, and so visited daily. On one occasion, in the lift, he asked an unwitting tenant how she liked the flat; she replied that it was "fine, but there's no broom cupboard". "You bloody women are never satisfied", replied Goldfinger with a twinkle in his eye. Sadly, as Warburton explains, Goldfinger was to witness the social and physical deterioration of 'his' estate during the 1970's. The public mood had turned against tower blocks following the collapse of Ronan Point, which killed five people. The absence of security measures and poor maintenance combined to unpleasant effect; Trellick Tower fell victim to crime and vandalism, and was eventually dubbed the 'Tower of Terror'. Warburton defends Goldfinger stoutly against critics who would blame the architect for every failing in a building. Indeed, he makes a spirited defence of the whole concept of high-rise living-having once lived in Goldfinger's Balfron Tower himself makes the author all the more persuasive.
In a dramatic change of fortune, Trellick Tower has now become almost comically fashionable. Much is made of its savvy population of young designers, desperately snapping up the few privately owned apartments in the building. This new reputation has robbed the tower of a little of its terror, but it still provides a gentle thrill as its distinctive concrete profile appears at the gateway to London. The Goldfinger House is now owned and maintained by England's National Trust, and in a snub to those who once felt it would 'desecrate' Hampstead, the house has become one of north London's most popular heritage sites. A careful archivist of his own work, Goldfinger transferred hundreds of boxes of drawings and papers to the Royal Institute of British Architects before his death. These have provided a rich source of material for Nigel Warburton's entertaining biography, which succeeds in weaving Goldfinger's life story together with an indepth discussion of his personality, working methods and influences. Hopefully in the future this book will be complemented by a comprehensive architectural review of Goldfinger's work, which could illustrate many more of his beautiful drawings.
Aside from his personality and his buildings, Goldfinger's name lives on as James Bond's foe in Ian Fleming's Goldfinger. Ernő was so incensed at giving his name to a villain in the book that he threatened to sue Fleming's publisher. The author in return suggested the character be renamed 'Goldprick'. Though Goldfinger relented, his family were plagued for years by late night phone calls from James Bond impersonators. It might seem bizarre, but in a life as rich and wide-ranging as Ernő Goldfinger's, nothing should surprise.
John Avery
was educated at architecture schools in Cambridge and Oxford, and works as a designer with Livesey O'Malley Architects in London.
