The Isokon building in Lawn Road, Hampstead

Hampstead

Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 is a concrete block of 34 flats designed by architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Wells Coates

Wells Coates

Wells Wintemute Coates OBE was an architect, designer and writer. He was, for most of his life, an ex-patriate Canadian architect who is best known for his work in England...

 for Molly and Jack Pritchard

Jack Pritchard

John Craven Pritchard was a British furniture designer, who was very influential between the First and Second World Wars...

. They were built between 1933 and 1934 as an experiment in communal living. Most of the flats had very small kitchens as there was a large communal kitchen for the preparation of meals, connected to the residential floors via a dumb waiter. Services, including laundry and shoe-shining, were provided on site.

Early famous residents included Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....

, Marcel Breuer

Marcel Breuer

Marcel Lajos Breuer , was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent. One of the masters of Modernism, Breuer displayed interest in modular construction and simple forms.- Life and work :Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at...

, Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

 (1940–46), László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...

, Adrian Stokes

Adrian Stokes (critic)

Adrian Stokes was a British writer and painter, known principally as an influential art critic. He was also a published poet.- Background :...

, Egon Riss and Arthur Korn

Arthur Korn (architect)

Arthur Korn was a German Jewish architect and urban planner who was a proponent of modernism in Germany and the UK.-Life and career:...

. Jack and Molly Pritchard lived in the penthouse. The communal kitchen was converted into the Isobar restaurant in 1937. In the mid-1930s Flat 7 was occupied by Dr Arnold Deutsch

Arnold Deutsch

Dr. Arnold Deutsch , variously described as Austrian, Czech, or Hungarian, was an academic who worked as a Soviet spy, most well known for having recruited Kim Philby. Much of his life remains unknown or disputed.-Early life:...

, the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

 agent who recruited the Cambridge Five

Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...

. James Stirling

James Stirling (architect)

Sir James Frazer Stirling FRIBA was a British architect. He is considered to be among the most important and influential British architects of the second half of the 20th century...

 was a resident during the 1960s.

The Isokon

Isokon

The London-based Isokon firm was founded in 1929 to design and construct modernist houses and flats, and subsequently furniture and fittings for them...

 company folded during World War II. In 1969 the Isobar was converted into flats and in 1972 the building was sold to Camden London Borough Council

Camden London Borough Council

Camden London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Camden in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London...

, and gradually deteriorated until the 1990s when it was abandoned and lay derelict for several years. In 2003, the building was sympathetically refurbished by Avanti Architects, a practice which specialise in the refurbishment of Modernist buildings, for Notting Hill Housing Association

Housing association

Housing associations in the United Kingdom are independent not-for-profit bodies that provide low-cost "social housing" for people in housing need. Any trading surplus is used to maintain existing homes and to help finance new ones...

 and is now primarily occupied by key worker

Key worker

A key worker is a public sector employee who is considered to provide an essential service. The term is often used in the United Kingdom in the context of those essential workers who may find it difficult to buy property in the area where they work....

s under a co-ownership scheme. The refurbishment has also created a public gallery displaying reproductions of the original interiors.

The block has been granted Grade I listed status, placing it amongst the most architecturally-significant historical buildings in the UK.

External links

• Page on the site from the Open University
• Camden listed building information
• Jack Pritchard — The Pritchard Papers, UEA Norwich