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The Woodford Ziggurat

After the clearance of the infamous Trinity slums in 1965, Redbridge held a competition to build affordable social housing for the 1000 displaced tenants who were temporarily dispersed to outlying towns like Ilford and Chingford.  Local businessman, Terry Dorset, in conjunction with Brutalist architect, Arnd Kuurms, put in a speculative bid for the work and were surprised when they made the shortlist. Shortly before he died in 1989 Dorset said, in interview, that  - ‘I made most of me money in publishing to be honest. True life confidential. Women’s mags. I spose my main income was from the men’s mags though. Never-ending appetite for them. Supply and demand. Made me a bloody fortune. Bought this place (Hexen Haven) and was able to gamble on the Ziggurat. Couldn’t believe it when Les (Leslie Croome, Redbridge Planning Officer) told me. I thought we had no chance ’.

Croome has been extremely reticent to discuss the project subsequently, even famously risking a contempt of court charge during the years of legal wrangling that followed the ill-fated project. Recently Croome suffered a series of strokes rendering him incapable of speech and it appears many of the secrets of what actually transpired during the planning and building of the Ziggurat  are now lost.

Kuurms, the architect, was found dead on the site several days before the opening ceremony in July 1969. This was a tragic end to what had been a quite stellar career. Kuurms came to prominence in the late 50’s under the wing of Erno Goldfinger, working with the great architect on the Trellick Tower. A brief involvement with Oscar Niemeyer ended after the two men fell out over concrete casting techniques. Kuurms was briefly at a loose end in London in 1965 when he and Dorset came into each other’s orbit. -‘It was at one of them Kray parties. Fucking ‘ell, they were something. I got to meeting Arnd through George Dyer, y’know the bloke Francis Bacon the painter ended up with. Poor old George, couldn’t keep up. Not the brightest button. Anyway Arnd thought George was a laugh. Don’t think he realised he was a poof.’

According to Dorset the two men got talking – ‘I spose I was looking for a more..er.. legitimate angle than wank mags. Arno was desperate for cash. But he was a dreamer. Something about the way he talked really got me going. It was going to be a gamble. I mentioned I owned this big site that was likely to get the go-ahead for redevelopment and that’s when he lit up. It was like all the booze and that drained out of him and he was stone cold sober and talking about this thing in a really clear, calm way’.

‘This thing’ turned out to be the dream to build a ziggurat, based on the stepped temple form favoured by the Assyrians amongst others. This form seemed to be coming back into favour, in different parts of the world, amongst the architects of what came to be called the Brutalist school. Favouring hard edged geometric structures, usually constructed from unadorned concrete, and developing out of the ideas of European architecture first proposed by Mies Van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, this was a very pervasive International style for 15 years. The style provoked, and continues to provoke, extreme reactions.  Much of what was built in this period has since, like the Ziggurat, been demolished and been replaced by much more conservative and backward-looking architecture.