Isokon building

The Isokon building on Lawn Road, Hampstead, London NW3 (also known as The Lawn Road Flats), is a concrete block of 34 flats designed by architect Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard. They opened on 9 July 1934 as an experiment in minimalist urban 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. The building included 22 single flats, 4 double flats, 3 studio flats, staff quarters, kitchens and a large garage. The Pritchards lived in a penthouse flat at the top with their two sons Jeremy and Jonathan. Plywood was used extensively in the apartments.

Early famous residents included: Bauhaus émigrés Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy; architects Egon Riss and Arthur Korn; Agatha Christie (1940–46) and Adrian Stokes; Jack and Molly Pritchard lived in the penthouse. The communal kitchen was converted into the Isobar restaurant in 1937, to a design by Marcel Breuer. The flats and particularly the bar became renowned as a centre for intellectual life in North London. Regulars at the Isobar included Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson.

In the mid-1930s Flat 7 was occupied by Dr Arnold Deutsch, the NKVD agent who recruited the Cambridge Five and spy Jürgen Kuczynski lived at Isokon while teaching economics at London University. The British architect Sir James Frazer Stirling was a resident during the 1960s.

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