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 internal layout, however, was governed by Goldfinger’s radical “hierarchy of space,” where foldable partitions and changing floor heights, rather than corridors and hallways, allowed for flexible, open-plan living. With the exception of the external concrete pillars, and the concrete drum enclosing a spiral staircase designed by British engineer Ove Arup, Goldfinger used natural, modest materials typical of socially conscious, interwar design. Much of the furniture and fittings—such as his desk, with its innovative pivoting drawers—Goldfinger designed himself. 

Goldfinger lived at 2 Willow Road for nearly half a century, until his death in 1987, developing the ideas that would result in Brutalist residential high-rises like Trellick Tower, now a London landmark, as well as building a collection of art by Marcel Duchamp, Henry Moore and Max Ernst. Perhaps his greatest achievement, however, was doing all this despite the occasional prank calls from Bond fans, singing “Goldfinger!” down the phone to the tune of the 1964 movie’s title song.