Isokon building

The Isokon building stands on Lawn Road in Belsize Park, London Borough of Camden. It is a reinforced-concrete block of 36 flats designed by Canadian engineer Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard. Construction began in 1929 and the complex opened in July 1934 as an experiment in minimalist urban living. All flats had small kitchens because meals were prepared in a communal kitchen with a dumbwaiter connecting to the residential floors. Services like laundry and shoe-polishing were provided on site. The Pritchards lived in a one-bedroom penthouse flat at the top with their two sons in a nearby studio. The building became a centre for socialist intellectual and artistic life in Hampstead. Notable residents included Bauhaus émigrés Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy. Other residents were writer Agatha Christie, archaeologist V. Gordon Childe and modernist architect Jacques Groag. The communal kitchen was converted into the Isobar restaurant in 1937, designed by Marcel Breuer and F. R. S. Yorke. Regular visitors to the Isobar included artists Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Today the building is partly occupied by key workers under a shared-ownership scheme. A smooth external finish in a pale pink tint has been restored, matching its original colour. The Isokon Gallery, run by volunteers, tells the story of the building and its residents in the former garage. The building was designated a Grade I listed structure in 1999 and an English Heritage blue plaque commemorates the Bauhaus masters who lived there.