This viewpoint will explore architect Ernő Goldfinger’s integration into contemporary British literary circles – far beyond his (frequently misreported) connection to Ian Fleming’s famous villain – and will use 2 Willow Road’s status as a National Trust property to consider how a once-iconoclastic modernism has been reclaimed as national heritage.

This viewpoint will explain how the structure’s inclusion in an ugly buildings competition brought to a head a larger “crisis of the English avant-garde,” to the lament of one prominent architectural critic.

This viewpoint will uncover how modernist animal housing was used as a prototype for bold new homes for British citizens, under the guidance of Julian Huxley and other visionaries.

Kensal House is a pioneering modern public housing project devised for working class families and designed by architect Maxwell Fry and housing consultant Elizabeth Denby.