Bartlett School of Architecture PhD student David Roberts has launched a new website ’Balfron Tower: a building archive’, the outcome of three years of doctoral research with current and former residents of Ernö Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower. His PhD investigates two East London housing estates undergoing urban regeneration – the Haggerston Estate in Hackney and the Brownfield Estate in Poplar, which includes Balfron Tower.
Roberts hopes the site will contribute to an informed public debate on key issues before refurbishment works on the tower are laid out. The website shares access to all the documents related to Balfron Tower which Roberts has gathered over the course of his research. This is displayed in a timeline, from archival records during the tower’s design phase in the 1960s to the most recent press articles, categorised under ten document types and filtered through a dozen questions. The responses to these questions reveal important information that has not yet been reported.
Explore Balfron Tower: A building Archive
Read more about the project in Archdaily and East End Review.