This week I visited the Isokon flats in Hampstead as part of my Monday seminars at the Bartlett. Designed by Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard, and built between 1933 and 1934, Isokon has been described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘a milestone in the introduction of the modern movement into London’. This was an experiment in communal living, creating twenty-two ‘minimum’ flats for young, single professionals starting work in London. Famous residents include: Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Arthur Korn, Moholy-Nagy, Agatha Christie and Lance Sieveking.
The name ‘Isokon’ comes from the combination of the words ‘Isometric’ and ‘Construction’. The term came to denote a style of modern living; “Isokon is a proprietary word that I have coined to denote the application of modern functional design to houses, flats, furnishings and fittings”. The flats consisted of a bed-sitting room, a dressing room linked to a bathroom and a kitchenette. Each flat had purpose-built furniture and fittings, including a sliding table and divan bed.
The reinforced concrete structure was finished with a cream-tinted cement wash. The whiteness and the slight angling of the building towards the road stands the building out from it’s surrounding red brick neighbours. The main feature of the external facade is the linear open gallery and external staircase.
Owned by Jack and Molly Pritchard until 1970 and sold to “New Statesman and Nation”, and then Camden Council. By 1995, the building was empty of occupants and vandalised, due to poor management. It is now restored to it’s former glory since a restoration by Avanti Architects in 2003. It now has a Grade 1 listing.
