ON A SPRING day in 1934, the great Modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin cut a forlorn figure. He had just missed acquiring a plot of land in Highgate, North London, where he had intended to build flats for workers of the Gestetner factory in Finchley. He decided to drown his sorrows in the first pub he found, The Wrestlers on North Hill.

As he lamented his bad luck, the barman told him that the Georgian house opposite was up for redevelopment. Lubetkin finished his pint, left the pub, and the Arcadian landscape of Highpoint was complete a year later. The building earned its name because it is the highest point in London, and the views from the roof stretch as far as the eye can see. Le Corbusier, one of the founders of Modernism, a style characterised by the use of concrete, metal and glass, called it a “vertical garden city”.

Seventy years on, Lubetkin’s grand “social condenser” survives, even though Highpoint is unlikely to be the fount of a glorious British revolution. When I moved in five years ago, I was surprised that, though the rubbish was collected every day, there was no recycling. I wondered if anyone else thought we should be a little more ecologically sound and placed a note on the board in the entrance hall. It got ripped down. I put it up again. It was torn down again. The third time I put a line on the bottom, asking whoever had been taking the note down to give me an explanation. That evening I received a call from the chairman of the board explaining that the note was handwritten, not typed. Besides, I had to ask her first, otherwise people would be putting notices up willy-nilly.

With the notice board outrage ringing in my ears, I joined the board for a year. The new chairman is a highly respected retired architect and the rest of the board includes other architects (unsurprisingly, Highpoint is full of them), an accountant and a lawyer. There are still surprising conflicts. The lobby is due for redecoration and restoration. The colour scheme should be a cinch — from Le Corbusier’s colour chart — but one member thought Thirties colours looked dated. Well, they do not look 21st-century, but I would have thought that was the point. Small gripes in the scheme of things.

Highpoint has improved each year since I moved in. Five years ago I could count the number of children in the block on one hand — and there are 60 flats in Highpoint 1 (there are two blocks). Now you can’t get from one end of the entrance hall to the other without tripping over a toddler. A swing and a slide have been put up in the garden. That has to be good for Highpoint’s future. For a start, the vast, breathtaking entrance hall was designed not only as a Modernist calling card but as a winter garden, and it comes into its own for parents on rainy days. The number of over-sixties in the block has gone down, but one of Highpoint’s curiosities is how long many of its residents live. I moved in just too late to meet a lady who had worked for Gestetner in 1935 and had been a resident from the beginning. Like Lubetkin, she was a Marxist and a copy of the Morning Star lay on her doormat every morning. It seems an extraordinary number of people here live to be 100. Something in the water? Probably not, as it still has lead piping as an original feature.

The renewed interest in Highpoint has affected prices. All flats are privately owned — I paid £300,000 for my two-bed flat in 2001; ones of similar size are now changing hands for about £410,000, and three-bed flats for £550,000.

Highpoint comes into its own in summer. Lubetkin based the layout on nearby Kenwood country house, and the building looks most spectacular when seen from the sloping lawns. The swimming pool is always busy on sunny weekends — it’s your chance to meet your neighbour’s Russian cousins you’ve heard so much about — while the tennis courts are used by octogenarians who look so fit you feel ashamed to take them on. Lubetkin was obsessed with blurring indoors and outdoors; each flat is heated from the ceiling to give the impression of the sun beaming down. The sense of community is heightened by the building’s bi-plane layout, which means the flats overlook each other.

The quirks and eccentricities keep Highpoint thriving. When I lived in Tufnell Park I barely got to know any of my neighbours in eight years. I know almost everyone here by their first name. Does this Modernist dream still work? I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather live.

• Living with Modernism, Tuesday, May 16, BBC Four, 10pm; and Dan Cruickshank’s Marvels of the Modern Age, also May 16, BBC Two, 9pm

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