Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain

Featuring many never-before-seen images, this fascinating look at England’s famed Isokon building and the renownedartists who lived there coincides with the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus in 1919.   In the mid-1930s, three giants of the international Modernist movement, Bauhaus professors Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy, fled Nazi Germany and sought refuge in Hampstead in the most exciting new apartment block in Britain. The Lawn Road Flats, or Isokon building (as it came to be known), was commissioned by the young visionary couple Jack and Molly Pritchard and designed by aspiring architect Wells Coates. Built in 1934, it was England’s first Modernist apartment building and was hugely influential in pioneering the concept of minimal living. Here is the story of the Isokon, from its beginnings to the present day, with an in-depth examination of the work, artistic networks, and legacy of the Bauhaus artists during their time in Britain. These enthralling tales are not just about design and architecture, but about war, espionage, death, sex . . . and infamous dinner parties. Isokon resident Agatha Christie features in the story as does architect Le Corbusier, who Jack Pritchard commissioned in 1925. Beautifully illustrated with archival photography—much of which has been previously unseen—this compelling book includes the work of photographer and Soviet spy Edith Tudor-Hart, as well as plans and sketches, menus, postcards, and letters from the Pritchard family archive.