Recent from talks
Ernő Goldfinger
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Ernő Goldfinger
Ernő Goldfinger RA (11 September 1902 – 15 November 1987) was a Hungarian-born British architect and furniture designer. He moved to the United Kingdom in the 1930s, and became a key member of the Modernist architectural movement. He is most prominently remembered for designing residential tower blocks, some of which are now listed buildings.
Goldfinger was born in Budapest to a Jewish family. The family business was forestry and saw-mills, which led Goldfinger to consider a career in engineering until he became interested in architecture after reading Hermann Muthesius's Das englische Haus, a description of English domestic architecture around the turn of the twentieth century.
Goldfinger moved to Paris in 1921, after the defeat and collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1923, he went to study at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in the atelier of Léon Jaussely, and in the following years got to know many other Paris-based architects, including Auguste Perret, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. In 1929, before finishing his studies, Goldfinger established a partnership and worked on a number of interior designs and an extension to a holiday home at Le Touquet.
He was strongly influenced by the publication of Le Corbusier's Vers une architecture, and became a fervent admirer of Le Corbusier's former mentor, Auguste Perret, an expert in designing reinforced concrete structures and an inspiration for Goldfinger when designing his own home. In the early 1930s, Goldfinger met and married Ursula Blackwell, heiress to the Crosse & Blackwell fortune. Goldfinger was based in the UK for the remainder of his career.
In 1934, Ernő and his wife, Ursula, moved to a flat in Highpoint I, London. Before World War II, Goldfinger built three houses (including his own) at 1–3 Willow Road in Hampstead, North London, and another at Broxted, Essex. His own house, 2 Willow Road, is now in the care of the National Trust.
After the war, Goldfinger was commissioned to build new offices for the Daily Worker newspaper and the headquarters of the British Communist Party. In the 1950s, he designed two London primary schools, including Greenside Primary School in west London, from prefabricated pre-cast concrete with brick infill for the London County Council. A cottage forming part of one of these schools, Brandlehow School in Putney, was demolished by a rogue developer who was prosecuted in 2008, and ordered to restore the building to "exactly match" its former appearance. The other school was Westville Road School in Shepherd's Bush, renamed Greenside Primary School in 1987, now a Grade II* listed building.
On the site of George Coles's Trocadero cinema in south-east London, Goldfinger built Alexander Fleming House for the Ministry of Health, and the Odeon Elephant & Castle, which opened in 1966, and has since been demolished.
In an attempt to solve the huge shortage of housing in the country following World War II, during which nearly 4 million houses had been destroyed or damaged, the British Government began to see high-rise buildings as a solution. Goldfinger rose to prominence in England as a designer of tower blocks.
Hub AI
Ernő Goldfinger AI simulator
(@Ernő Goldfinger_simulator)
Ernő Goldfinger
Ernő Goldfinger RA (11 September 1902 – 15 November 1987) was a Hungarian-born British architect and furniture designer. He moved to the United Kingdom in the 1930s, and became a key member of the Modernist architectural movement. He is most prominently remembered for designing residential tower blocks, some of which are now listed buildings.
Goldfinger was born in Budapest to a Jewish family. The family business was forestry and saw-mills, which led Goldfinger to consider a career in engineering until he became interested in architecture after reading Hermann Muthesius's Das englische Haus, a description of English domestic architecture around the turn of the twentieth century.
Goldfinger moved to Paris in 1921, after the defeat and collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1923, he went to study at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in the atelier of Léon Jaussely, and in the following years got to know many other Paris-based architects, including Auguste Perret, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. In 1929, before finishing his studies, Goldfinger established a partnership and worked on a number of interior designs and an extension to a holiday home at Le Touquet.
He was strongly influenced by the publication of Le Corbusier's Vers une architecture, and became a fervent admirer of Le Corbusier's former mentor, Auguste Perret, an expert in designing reinforced concrete structures and an inspiration for Goldfinger when designing his own home. In the early 1930s, Goldfinger met and married Ursula Blackwell, heiress to the Crosse & Blackwell fortune. Goldfinger was based in the UK for the remainder of his career.
In 1934, Ernő and his wife, Ursula, moved to a flat in Highpoint I, London. Before World War II, Goldfinger built three houses (including his own) at 1–3 Willow Road in Hampstead, North London, and another at Broxted, Essex. His own house, 2 Willow Road, is now in the care of the National Trust.
After the war, Goldfinger was commissioned to build new offices for the Daily Worker newspaper and the headquarters of the British Communist Party. In the 1950s, he designed two London primary schools, including Greenside Primary School in west London, from prefabricated pre-cast concrete with brick infill for the London County Council. A cottage forming part of one of these schools, Brandlehow School in Putney, was demolished by a rogue developer who was prosecuted in 2008, and ordered to restore the building to "exactly match" its former appearance. The other school was Westville Road School in Shepherd's Bush, renamed Greenside Primary School in 1987, now a Grade II* listed building.
On the site of George Coles's Trocadero cinema in south-east London, Goldfinger built Alexander Fleming House for the Ministry of Health, and the Odeon Elephant & Castle, which opened in 1966, and has since been demolished.
In an attempt to solve the huge shortage of housing in the country following World War II, during which nearly 4 million houses had been destroyed or damaged, the British Government began to see high-rise buildings as a solution. Goldfinger rose to prominence in England as a designer of tower blocks.