Cult Rooms A modernist with the Midas touch.
Cult Rooms A modernist with the Midas touch.
Ernö Goldfinger’s first major project in the UK was 1-3 Willow Road in north London, built in 1938. The Hungarian-born Goldfinger had set out to create a home in Hampstead—where he and his wife had lived since 1934—that would showcase his talent as an architect, but the project was the subject of controversy rather than admiration at first. Though it is now one of London’s best-known modernist homes, his plan involved demolishing a row of Victorian cottages, drawing the ire of local residents.1 (According to some sources, this is why Ian Fleming named the villain in one of his James Bond novels after Goldfinger.)
The terrace of three red-brick houses (Goldfinger lived at the largest, number 2) took inspiration from the proportions of the surrounding Georgian architecture. The int...