Isokon Building

The Isokon Building, also known as Isokon Flats, is a reinforced concrete block of flats on Lawn Road in the Belsize Park area of the London Borough of Camden, designed by the Canadian engineer Wells Coates and opened on 9 July 1934 after several years of development. The building drew on Art Deco, Bauhaus, and modernist principles to pioneer minimalist urban living through compact units supported by shared communal facilities such as a kitchen, laundry, and shoe polishing service. Its early residents included the Bauhaus figures Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer alongside the novelist Agatha Christie and the sculptor Henry Moore, and its Isobar restaurant became a noted gathering place for the intellectual and artistic life of Hampstead. Now Grade I listed and restored in 2003, the building operates partly as affordable housing and partly as an exhibition gallery.