Talk Auditorium

Urban Living: Trellick Tower

A special event marking the 50th anniversary of Trellick Tower. Join Architects James Dunnett and Thomas Aquilina, and Spatial Justice campaigner Eve Wedderburn in conversation with our Head of Curatorial Priya Khanchandani as they reflect on the Trellick Tower as an emblem of contemporary urban living.

Trellick Tower, photography by Andy Aderinto.

Trellick Tower, photography by Andy Aderinto.

Trellick Tower Illustration by Toby Laurent Belson.

What to expect

Trellick Tower, built between 1968-72, was designed by Erno Goldfinger for the Greater London Council. Built as part of the Cheltenham Estate, an ‘integrated living unit’ designed to replace substandard pre-war housing, Goldfinger’s utopian solution was radical and divisive. Revered and reviled in equal measure over five decades, the 31-storey brutalist tower block was classified as a Grade II* listed building in 1998.

This discussion brings together practitioners working across architecture, housing and spatial justice to critique Goldfinger’s model for social housing and explore how the material conditions of architectural practice must address a complex system of interrelated economic, political, cultural, social and ideological conditions.

Speakers

Eve Wedderburn

Wedderburn is a small business owner and has been involved in campaigns around the ownership and management of community assets and land, including North Kensington Library, Wornington College, and the Westway Trust. She will be joining Peace News, a publication for non-violent revolution, in the coming year.

James Dunnett

Dunnett is an architect and academic who worked for Erno Goldfinger and the London Borough of Camden Architects Department before starting his own practice and teaching part-time at Canterbury College of Art and Oxford Brookes University.

Priya Khanchandani

Khanchandani is a writer, curator and commentator based in London. She is the Head of Curatorial at the Design Museum and a Trustee of the Hepworth Wakefield. She has worked across arts institutions and design journalism for the past decade, following degrees from Cambridge University and the Royal College of Art and an earlier career as a lawyer.

Thomas Aquilina

Aquilina is an architect dedicated to building communities of radical thought and progressive practice. He is a co-director of the New Architecture Writers programme and is a co-founder of publishing collective Afterparti. He holds the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation Fellowship at the London School of Architecture.

Book online

Booking information

Adult: £8
Student: £6
Members: £5

Tickets are non-refundable and non-exchangeable. Visit our terms & conditions page for further information.

A limited number of tickets are available through our Emerging Designers Access Scheme. If you are an emerging designer and facing financial barriers to attend, please register here.

Background image: Trellick Tower by Dan Seddon/Unsplash.