‘The council tenants weren’t going to be allowed back’: how Britain’s ‘ugliest building’ was gentrified

The east London brutalist landmark Balfron Tower was conceived as the perfect neighbourhood in the sky by its Marxist architect. Now its flats are being sold as ‘trophy properties’A dizzying dining deck crowns the summit of the newly renovated Balfron Tower in Poplar, east London, perched like a crow’s nest on top of the brutalist concrete lift shaft. Floating almost 30 storeys up in the air, with spectacular views across the city, it marks the apex of a new dedicated tower of