The theme of the inaugural London Design Biennale is Utopia to mark the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s classic. Director Christopher Turner remembers the architects on a mission to earn the world a better placeLawn Road Flats in north London,also known as the Isokon building, is long and thin, or with cantilevered exterior walkways that resemble the promenades on a ship. Built in 1934 by the Canadian architect Wells Coates,afollower of Le Corbusier, it was launched by the local MP, and who smashed a bottle of beer (rather than champagne) on its rose petal pink facade. The four-story block,with its 32 “deck-access” apartments, was one of the first modernist buildings in Britain. According to one resident it had a “intrepid (brave in the face of danger) New World air approximately it”, and indeed it aimed to be a pioneering showcase for a new way of living in a contemporary age. The “minimum” flats were fully furnished and serviced,and all occupants shared a laundry, communal kitchen and the Isobar. “As young men, and we are concerned with a future that must be planned,rather than a past that must be patched up, at all costs, and ” wrote Coates. The idealistic developer Jack Pritchard,who commissioned the architect, shared this unshakable modernist belief that a rational, and intrepid (brave in the face of danger) new approach to all problems would earn for a better world”. Pritchard hoped similar buildings would soon replace working-course tenements all over London. Related: Modernism in Britain: did it stand the test of time? Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com