Isokon Gallery

30/05/2026

Tomorrow Sunday 31st May we are showing an Isokon 'Existence Minimum' flat 11am-1pm. No booking is required but we ask for a £10 donation per visitor to the Isokon Gallery Trust. The museum is open 11am-4pm and is free to visit.

28/05/2026

Tomorrow is the last Friday of the month and that means we’re open 11am-4pm and offer 15% off all books and magazines! Only at the Isokon Gallery, Lawn Road, Belsize Park, NW3.

23/05/2026

This week we visited The Homewood in Esher, the interwar masterpiece designed by architect Patrick Gwynne, and now a National Trust property. Gwynne, then only in his early 20s, briefly worked for Isokon architect Wells Coates around 1935-36, and the drawings for the house has Coates’ name on them, but in reality the house is Gwynne’s creation. He lived in the house for the rest of his life. Photography is not allowed inside but the interior is spectacular, and so is the extensive garden! Go visit (booking in advance required)!

21/05/2026

Great event last evening at Space House in central London, where Squire & Partners architects showed us the retrofitting of this mid-century iconic building. The views from the top were spectacular!

16/05/2026

John Piper, ‘Brighton Aquatints’ from 1939, showing Regency, Victorian and Modern (in the form of Wells Coates 1935 Embassy Court) together.

15/05/2026

Next week we're having a visit from Villa Trapenard. It's a landmark modernist house located in Sceaux, Paris, designed in 1932 by the influential French avant-garde architect and designer Robert Mallet-Stevens. Built for his close friend Jacques Trapenard, a prominent Parisian attorney and cellist, the private residence stands as a prime, rare example of cubic and Streamline Moderne architecture in the Paris suburbs. While much smaller than Mallet-Stevens' monumental masterpiece such as Villa Cavrois or Villa Noailles, the Villa Trapenard is celebrated as a highly successful application of pure modernist ideals to a warm, domestic scale. It was classified as a French National Historic Monument (Monument Historique) in 2024.

14/05/2026

We have a new talk coming up on the 25th June where Levent Özmen talks about the recent paintings of Isokon by the German artist Karin Kneffel, who recently exhibited in London. Kneffel's interest in Bauhaus archival materials is a way to draw attention to overlooked women. Tickets on Eventbrite.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/isokon-according-to-karin-kneffel-a-hyperrealist-painter-of-the-bauhaus-tickets-1989290451290?aff=oddtdtcreator&_gl=1*19tgyv3*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTU5NzMwMjg2NC4xNzc4NzUxODIy*_ga_TQVES5V6SH*czE3Nzg3NTE4MjEkbzEkZzAkdDE3Nzg3NTE4MjEkajYwJGwwJGgw

13/05/2026

09/05/2026

Agatha Christie (Mrs Mallowan) stayed for six years at Isokon Flats, from 1941 until 1947. At first she occupied a 25 m2 minimum flat, then one of the larger studio flats at the south end of the building, and for the last two years she had two minimum flats (numbers 16 and 17) and got permission to have an interconnecting door installed. The letter from June 1945 to her husband Max Mallowan documents this. By adding the two flats together, it made her flat the second largest in the building besides the Pritchard penthouse, and the only one with two bathrooms. Max Mallowan has just returned from his wartime work in Cairo, so it made sense to give the Mallowan couple special dispensation. The door is no longer there. With thanks to the Pritchard Papers / UEA and the Agatha Christie archive.

05/05/2026

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b015d486/the-1951-festival-of-britain-a-brave-new-world

Documentary telling the story of the 1951 Festival of Britain, which in a period of austerity showed how to carve out a bright new future through design and ingenuity.