Trellick Tower
Golborne Road Notting Hill London W10 5PA
Designed by Ernö Goldfinger, who himself lived in the leafier suburb of Hampstead in a less imposing but still interesting building – 2 Willow Road – this 31-storey residential block is a classic of its kind, an early 1970s monument to brutalist architecture. Now a grade II listed building, it's is still lived in so you can't peak inside, but having gone in and out of fashion it's now enjoying something of a revival. The area still has a down-at-heel edge, and the towers are to everyone's taste; but they have a certain brutalist charm, and you may find architecture students drooling at its base – though whether they'd like to live there or not is another matter. Still, it's such an influential building it's worth the walk from the more chi-chi bits of Notting Hill – and in any case it's worth the walk to Golborne Road to visit some of the Portuguese and Moroccan cafés and bars which sit in the building's shadow.
