London’s ‘ugliest’ tall buildings where flats can cost £1million

With three Golden Globes under its belt already and ten Oscar nominations, The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, in cinemas now, is shaping up as a modern classic, already taking $18million globally at the box office. Its story – of Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth bringing modernist design to the US after World War II – is fictional. But it bears astonishing parallels to real-life Hungarian-Jewish architect Ernő Goldfinger, who arrived in the UK in the 1930s and went on to design some of London’s most enduring brutalist landmarks, including two early skyscrapers, both now Grade II*-listed – Trellick Tower in Ladbroke Grove and Balfron Tower in Poplar.

Early critics branded the buildings, with their distinctive service towers, eyesores. And the public was no more forgiving of the capital’s greatest brutalist project, the Barbican. The complex of more than 2,000 homes, which opened on the fringes of the City in 1969, was widely mocked and voted London’s ugliest tall building in a poll run by New London Architecture as recently as 2014. But over the years the capital’s concrete jungles have come to occupy a unique property sweet spot.

They are often in fantastic central locations and, while not to everyone’s taste, there are many who admire the minimal lines, monochrome colour palette and smart design features that they offer. Among the admirers are James Soane and Christopher Ash, both 58 and co-directors of architectural practice Project Orange. In 2021, they spent around £500,000 on a studio apartment in the Barbican to use as a London pied-à-terre. They split their time between the flat and a home in Suffolk.

At just over 450sq ft, the property is far larger than a typical studio, 
and the couple have fully refurbished it. They love the Barbican for its aesthetics, amenities and gardens. ‘If you have a flat, you get what we call the golden key, although it is actually brass,’ says James. ‘It lets you into lots of areas and gardens not accessible to the public, so it seems like an adventure living here.’.

To get the latest news from the capital visit Metro's London news hub. Of course, not all brutalist designs are created equal. James admires the robust Barbican homes, with their teak-framed windows and terracotta-tiled hallways, which have more than stood the test of time. But this is a development that was well built and has been well maintained. Across the capital, many estates 
of a similar era – notably the monstrous Thamesmead in deepest south-east London – are being torn down and replaced with modern apartment buildings.

For architect Ben Allen, living in Keeling House, Bethnal Green, meant the chance to inhabit a home designed by the British architect Denys Lasdun, who also designed the South Bank’s Royal National Theatre. Keeling House, originally social housing but sold and redeveloped in the late 1990s, has a central service tower linked by bridges to four residential towers. Ben, 49, founder and director of Studio Ben Allen, and his wife Frances Stocks Allen, 40, a lawyer, bought their two-bedroom, split-level flat in 2016 for £620,000.

‘It is lovely,’ says Ben. ‘The building is quite stark but you get beautiful views, almost filmic snapshots, 
as you go up. I call it our cottage in the sky because beyond the brutalist exterior, the maisonettes themselves are very sweet.’. Ben and Frances have a three-year-old son, Aubrey. Their daughter, Alma, was born in December. The property is small for a family of 
four, which is forcing them to think about moving on, but space aside, Ben thinks Keeling House makes a great family home.

The neighbours are friendly, there are plenty of other children in the building, and there’s a small grassy area where they can play. ‘We know our neighbours pretty well,’ he says. ‘You often bump into people on 
the bridges, or at reception, and although it is a diverse community, 
I suppose in at least one way we are like-minded because we all wanted to live in this building.’. Danny Brewer, associate partner at the Unique Property Company, has not always been a fan of brutalist buildings. ‘I used to hate them,
I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in these big concrete jungles,’ he says. ‘But that was before I got into the flats and saw what they were like.

‘The living spaces are really cleverly designed. There is storage, they are warm and quiet, you don’t get damp and drafts and the light is really good.’. Most of Danny’s brutalist buyers are creatives – including architects and musicians – who love mid-century style. Price depends on which floor a flat is on, its location, and how many original features it still possesses. ‘But there is a premium. In my experience they cost about five to ten per cent more than a period conversion,’ he says.