1, 2 And 3, Willow Road

CAMDEN

TQ2785NW WILLOW ROAD 798-1/28/1723 (South side) 14/05/74 Nos.1, 2 AND 3

II*

Terrace of 3 houses, designed to appear as a single building. 1938. By Erno Goldfinger. Reinforced concrete with external walls faced in red brick. Floors carried on reinforced concrete columns and on the cylindrical drum from which the spiral staircase in the centre of the house is cantilevered. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys to front, 4 to rear. Continuous window opening at 1st floor level; 2nd floor, 7 windows. Ground floor with recessed entrances and garages; garages of Nos 1 & 3 project to support 1st floor balconies. Entrances with plain doors and rectangular sidelights. Metal framed casements. 1st floor window openings in concrete architrave having vertically set panes providing French windows to the balconies and continuing as a strip across a secondary opening with concrete architrave having picture windows alternating with windows of 2 rectangular lights. 2nd floor, 7 rectangular 2-light casements in concrete architraves standing forward from the brick surface. Parapet. Rear facade simpler with balcony over garden. INTERIOR: No.2 has the largest and most important interior, surviving with a richness of detailing as continually evolved by Goldfinger himself, who lived there until his death in 1987, and his artist wife Ursula. Lower floor divided as separate children's flat. Narrow ground floor with rubber-floored entrance hall, whence top-lit spiral stair with slim steel balustrade rises through house. Sculpture by Victor Passmore from their 'This is Tomorrow' exhibition collaboration, 1956, at base. First floor with living room overlooking rear garden with fitted bookcases and furniture, curved frame surround to formal wall for exhibiting paintings over fireplace, with study behind. In centre, Goldfinger's fitted work bench, set over a change in levels, with pairs of sliding screens to adapt space as artist's studio. Broader dining room across front, with broad window shelf, fitted furniture and dining table by Goldfinger. Later kitchenette to side added mid-late 1960s by Goldfinger. Bedroom floor simpler but retains much fitted furniture and top-lit bathroom with cupboards and fittings. HISTORICAL NOTE: the principal surviving artistic interior from the 1930s: a collection of modern artifacts and fittings within a Modern Movement house. It is a demonstration how the

Modern Movement in Britain at the end of the 1930s reasserted an interest in brick as a facing material. This terrace replaced an C18 row of cottages in what Goldfinger called "an adaptation of C18 style", based on a hierarchy of spaces that follows the Classical divisions; basement, piano nobile and attic. Goldfinger's own house, No.2, acquired by the National Trust in 1992.

Listing NGR: TQ2701985839