264:, who demolished the Isobar and made it into flats. They then sold the building on to Camden Council in 1972 for twice the price. The building was listed Grade II in 1974 by English Heritage and listed Grade I in 1999. Despite this, it received very poor maintenance from Camden Council and deteriorated badly. During this period it was partly used to house single men with drug, alcohol and mental health problems. After a long campaign to save the building, it was sold to the housing association Notting Hill Housing Group in 2003, in a joint bid with the modernist building conservation firm Avanti Architects, headed up by architect John Allan, with the pledge that a museum would open in the building. It now contains 36 flats, most that are owned on equity sharing basis by key workers such as nurses and teachers. In July 2014, the building's garage was converted into a gallery space with a permanent exhibition that tells the story of the building, its residents and the Isokon company. It is operated by the not-for-profit charitable Isokon Gallery Trust and is open 11am to 4 pm each Saturday and Sunday from early March until the end of October every year.
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Alan
Designs, based in Camden, London to produce the Long Chair, Nesting Tables and the Isokon Penguin Donkey Mark 2 designed by Ernest Race, which the company did until 1980. The Isokon Penguin Donkey Mark 2 became a sales success due to the support of Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books. In 1982, Chris McCourt of Windmill Furniture was granted the license to manufacture the historical Isokon furniture pieces by Pritchard. From 1999, the Isokon furniture was sold through his renamed company Isokon Plus, first based in Chiswick, West London and from 2014 in Hackney Wick, East London. The company was later sold to VG&P, which retained the Isokon Plus brand. The first furniture to be added to the Isokon portfolio since 1963 was designed by the duo Barber Osgerby in 1996. Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby had recently graduated from the Royal College of Art when they designed their first piece, the Loop Table. The bent plywood design was to be the first of several furniture pieces that the designers created for Isokon Plus, the most recent the Bodleian Chair for the University of Oxford's historic
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of
Venesta and was Europe's largest plywood manufacturer in the first half of the 20th century. The Isokon company was never commercially successful. The end came with the outbreak of World War II when its supply of plywood from A M Luther was cut off due to the Soviet invasion of Estonia and A M Luther was confiscated. Isokon ceased production in 1939 but the company was restarted by Pritchard in 1963, now with production in Britain. Since 1982, the furniture is made by Isokon Plus, formerly known as Windmill Furniture, with the approval of the Pritchard family.
295:, another former Bauhaus teacher who also lived briefly in the building with his wife Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, became involved with Isokon when he arrived in Britain from Germany in May 1935. Moholy-Nagy designed promotional material for the Isokon Furniture Company, including sales leaflets, showcards and the logo of the Isokon firm itself, which was an outline of curved plywood chair. He later formed The New Bauhaus in Chicago.
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of
Frederick James Maw, the founder of the law firm Rowe and Maw, the economist Robert S Spicer, as well as Coates and Pritchard. In reality, the company was run by Pritchard, whose initial involvement was to handle the economics, publicity and marketing, but who later went on to hire designers and direct the company after Coates left. Pritchard had become the British marketing manager for the large plywood company
280:, became Controller of Design for The Isokon Furniture Company. He had arrived in England on 18 October 1934 with his wife Ise Gropius, and later their adopted daughter Ati joined them. Gropius lived in flat 15 at Lawn Road Flats until March 1937, when they left for the United States for Gropius to become Professor of Architecture at Harvard University. A month before he left for the US, Gropius recommended
166:, who after World War II became the first TV celebrity chef at the BBC. Pritchard also set up a supper club called The Half Hundred Club, so named because it could have no more than 25 members who could bring 25 guests. They dined either at the Isobar, at Pritchard's penthouse flat in the Isokon building or at more exotic locations, such as London Zoo.
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Pritchard revived the Isokon company in 1963 after his retirement. Changes in the manufacture of plywood meant a redesign of some of the key pieces in the Isokon portfolio, for which
Pritchard hired Ernest Race, former furniture designer for the Festival of Britain. In 1968, Pritchard licensed John
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to design a trade fair stand for the company at
Olympia, London in 1929. Despite his involvement with Lawn Road Flats and the Isokon company, Pritchard continued to work for Venesta until 1936. The Isokon furniture was mainly manufactured at A M Luther in Tallinn, an Estonian company that owned 50%
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and
Partners, the name was changed in 1931 to Isokon, a name derived from Isometric Unit Construction, bearing an allusion to Russian Constructivism. Unusually for a design company, its directors were the bacteriologist and later psychiatrist Molly Pritchard, the solicitor Frederick Graham-Maw, son
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and his wife Ise, while the children attended a boarding school in Canada. The building was popular as a residence during the war due to being made out of reinforced concrete, and despite near bombs, survived the Blitz. It was repainted brown during the war as it was feared its white surface could
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who was educated at the
Bauhaus school in Dessau. Intended to be the last word in contemporary modernist living, the block of flats was aimed at young professionals. It contained 22 single flats, four double flats, three studio flats, staff quarters, kitchens and a large garage. Services included
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who had moved into flat 16 in the building in early 1935, as his replacement as
Controller of Design. The furniture Breuer designed whilst at Isokon are highly influential pieces of modernism, and included chairs, tables and the Long and Short Chair.
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In 1924, Pritchard married
Rosemary (Molly) Cooke, a psychiatrist (1900 - 1985); they had two sons, Jonathan and Jeremy, born in 1926 and 1928. Jack also had a daughter, Jennifer, with Beatrix Tudor Hart, a pioneering educator.
193:, ethnomusicologist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, architect Jacques Groag and his wife, textile designer Jacqueline Groag, architects Egon Riss and Arthur Korn and the author Adrian Stokes. The British architects
110:(short for veneer Estonia) in 1926, which had 5,000 employees and a factory and wharf in Silvertown, East London as well as offices in the City of London. Pritchard had hired
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Isokon's key project was the Lawn Road Flats in
Hampstead, since 1972 named Isokon Flats, which was formally opened on 9 July 1934. It was designed by the Canadian architect
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The London-based Isokon firm was founded in 1929 to design and construct modernist houses and flats, and subsequently furniture and fittings for them. Originally called
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Pritchard remained in London during World War II while Molly Pritchard and their children Jonathan and Jeremy left for the United States where she moved in with
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shoe cleaning, laundry, bed making and food sent up by a dumb waiter at the spine of the building. In 1937, a restaurant and bar designed by
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serve as a guide for German bombers. In 1955, Pritchard staged a 21st birthday party for the building on its roof top terrace.
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named the Isobar – located on the ground floor with a decked outdoor area - was added to the complex. Its first manager was
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The flats and the Isobar became famous as a centre for intellectual life in north London. Residents included the novelist
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in Dessau, which had a large influence. The building process of Lawn Road Flats and the opening event was photographed by
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after a brief by Molly Pritchard, based on the Minimum Flat concept stated at the CIAM conference of 1929. In March 1931,
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MacCarthy, Fiona. 2019. Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus. London: Faber & Faber.
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in Bogotá, Colombia were resident during the 1960s. Regulars at the Isobar included the sculptors
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Daybelge, Leyla and Englund, Magnus. 2019. Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain. London: Batsford.
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Burke, David. 2014. The Lawn Road Flats: Spies, Writers and Artists. London: Boydell Press.
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and many pre-World War II residents attended the event, as well as designers Robin Day and
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Powers, Alan. 2019. Bauhaus Goes West. London: Thames & Hudson.
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Darling, Elizabeth. 2012. Wells Coates. London: RIBA Enterprises.
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View from a Long Chair - the Memoirs of Jack Pritchard
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