St. Leonards Road, London, E14 4 bed apartment - £3,695 pcm (£853 pw)

Heritage Unit. Retaining the original style, features and charm, this renovated 4 bedroom apartment to rent in the highly anticipated Balfron Tower.

Description

The kitchen features clean white cabinetry with extruded aluminium pull handles and stainless steel worktops, plus an integrated Bosch oven and induction hob, fridge-freezer and dishwasher.

A marker of midcentury tastes, every bathroom pairs modish grid tiles and a steel blue linoleum floor with sleek modern sanitaryware. There’s a full-size bathtub, a chrome rainfall shower with a second side-mounted head and a separate toilet with a high level flush. Designed with real routines in mind, a generous mirrored cabinet sits above the washbasin.

Life at Balfron Tower comes with plenty of perks. The building is pet-friendly, with both cats and dogs welcome, while an onsite team is ready to respond to any day-to-day queries. Residents also benefit from secure internal bicycle storage, as well as individual smart parcel lockers accessible day and night. The Way of Life app is a dedicated hub that handles the technical bits of your tenancy, plus quick tasks like booking spaces.

One of London’s very few listed post-war buildings, Balfron Tower is an icon of modernist thinking. The ‘older sibling’ of North Kensington’s Trellick Tower, it was designed by Hungarian-born architect Ern Goldfinger in the emerging Brutalist style as the centrepiece of a trio of buildings called the Brownfield Estate. For Goldfinger, who lived in flat 130 with his wife Ursula in 1968, this was the embodiment of his vision for a vertical neighbourhood – and an antidote to what he saw as the sprawl of suburbia.

Drawing on Goldfinger’s philosophy of shared life, the service tower which gives the building its distinctive silhouette has been smartly converted into a series of unique communal spaces by Studio Egret West and Ab Rogers Design. Draw back the curtain on the third floor to reveal a cocooning red cinema room, complete with state-of-the-art audio visual system and armchairs by Stockholm studio Massproductions. For supper clubs and special occasions, there’s a fully-equipped kitchen on the 27th floor, connected to a bookable dining room for up to twelve by a powder pink slatted staircase. Other levels house a fitness space, a mirrored yoga studio with ladder barrel and a table tennis room. A new communal roof garden champions naturalistic planting.

Residents also have access to a range of characterful co-working spaces throughout the building. The library evokes a midcentury palette with its sophisticated primary hues and modernist Robin Day recliners, alongside apple green shelves stocked with art, design and architecture reference books. Two other dedicated workspaces have their own character, from cork walls to architectural bar lighting, but all feature generous desks, fast WiFi and plug sockets just where you need them.

Balfron Tower’s guest suites are just the thing for keeping friends and family close – but not too close. For spontaneous overnighters or special meet-ups, this series of bookable hotel-style apartments offers non-residents an opportunity to bed down in one of London’s architectural gems.

These considered new spaces form part of a sensitive retrofit which has reimagined life at the tower for today. A public square has been created at its foot, walkways and planting re-plotted and a modern outdoor play space carved from a poorly-used yard area, while a refreshed lobby preserves original 1960s features. The structure of the building has been extensively refurbished and new windows installed, all as part of a wider effort to safeguard the future of Balfron Tower for the next generation.

Sitting at the junction of the Limehouse Cut canal and the Bow section of the River Lea Navigation, well-connected Poplar is synonymous with east London’s waterways. Extensively damaged during the second world war due to its dockside location, the area sa