Goldfinger's ideas on modern living: 60 second lecture (7/11)

Goldfinger was part of the modernist movement and very much utopian,
influenced by Le Corbusier with his notions of streets in the sky,
the way to live in the future was actually to get up there
and stop taking up the space, the space which could be free
for parkland and space which could be free to enjoy the land
and get their feet on the ground.
The whole idea of building high for him was to save space,
not to make a congested city.
But, actually, of course, tower blocks get built
and other things get built around them, so, it didn't quite work out.
And lots of the utopian ideas weren't quite right in practise.
Goldfinger was an empiricist, he took experience seriously,
so when he learned that something didn't work, he changed it.
For instance, in this tower block over here, we've got three lifts,
whereas, in the one he built just before, there were only two,
which was absolute hell for anybody trying to move into the place.
Goldfinger actually is probably,
with Libeskind, the most significant modernist architect
working in Britain in the post-war period.