Goldfinger conceived the design for 1-3 Willow Road as both a functional home for his growing family and as an opportunity to explore his talents as an architect.

The site was formerly occupied by four small cottages, facing a triangle of north-facing open land, and was perfect for reflecting Goldfinger's ideas for giving his buildings a sense of light and space.

His initial plans, drawn up in 1936, were for a block of flats with studios, with one for his own family, but these were rejected by the London County Council. He experimented with several other designs before coming up with the final, acceptable terrace of three houses, with a large central home, almost square in plan, for the Goldfinger family.

The concrete frame was calculated by the Danish engineer Ove Arup (then working for the firm J.L. Kier), with the first floor of the large No. 2 house designed as a flexible space. The double-height studio was abandoned in favour of a change in floor level to correspond with the various functions of the house. A flat roof, allowing staircase and bathrooms to be lit from above, saved the walls for bedrooms and a nursery.

The planning process for the house was, however, not easy to resolve.

Windows had to be altered for fire protection and a letter of protest by local figure Henry Brooke sparked a row that led to national press interest in the scheme. After explaining his intention to create houses that respected classical lines and the surrounding Georgian villas and also had little concrete visible, Goldfinger's plans were finally accepted.

The building contract was awarded to Leslie Bilsby, a passionate believer in modern architecture, for a price of £3,885, including the land. The houses were completed just a couple of months before the outbreak of the Second World War, with the family moving in in September 1939.