The upwardly mobile go for the high life

Tower blocks are the trendiest places to live, writes Louise Jury

AFFLUENT professionals are moving up and not just in their careers - high-rise is the trendy new way to live.

Stephan Miles-Brown, head of residential development for estate agents Knight Frank, said: "We've done river views and dock views, but we've never lived high-rise. Once you get up there, you discover there's freedom and space and a bit of an elitist thing - a sort of nearer my God to thee." It also removes the need for curtains.

While Britain has never gone for 50 or 60-storey buildings in the manner of New York, Singapore or Hong Kong, Mr Miles-Brown believes travel has certainly broadened our minds about high-rise living and helped dispel the negative connotations promoted by the tower blocks of the Sixties and Seventies. "Council blocks gave high-rise a bad name, whereas in other cities of the world high-rises have always been very expensive."

Now Britain is catching up. Opposite Chelsea Harbour in London, Britain's leading architect, Lord Rogers, plans to erect a 19-storey glass building, Montevetro, designed for the style-conscious home hunter. Both Millbank Tower in Westminster and Century House in Lambeth, the former MI6 headquarters, are being sold and could become homes.

Mr Miles-Brown believes that even some council properties will not be excluded from the boom. The successful Falcons development in Battersea was once a council estate, although he predicts Lambeth council may have problems selling its Ethelred estate in Vauxhall, as it is trying to do at the moment.

Five years ago, no one would have dreamed of transforming Alexander Fleming House, the concrete and glass carbuncle at Elephant and Castle, into flats. Yet virtually every flat in the new Metro Central development there has been sold. And Mr Miles-Brown predicts several of the capital's taller buildings will be transformed into homes in the future. The Knightsbridge military barracks, for example, is "one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in London".

Of course, the wealthy have known this for some time. Lord Archer, the novelist, has the penthouse suite, worth perhaps pounds 3m, in Peninsula Heights, a high-rise with a view across the Houses of Parliament. Harry Handelsman, who brought New York loft-style apartments to Britain through Manhattan Lofts, has a magnificent penthouse in his Bankside development on the south side of the Thames.

But it is not only for style reasons that a move upwards may be necessary. Colin James, an architect on the Royal Institute of British Architects' Brown Fields First committee, aimed at developing so-called brownfield sites in the city rather than building more homes in the countryside, said cities must be made more agreeable to live in.

He pointed to work done by Birmingham city council, which has transformed its tower blocks with security systems, porterage and a carpet in the entrance. "They are now civilised places to live," he said.