"Picture this: it's 6 p.m., and you're done with the day's hard work as a designer. As you walk up the slopes of Hampstead Heath, you take in the sights and sounds of the community around you. Soon, you arrive at your apartment on Lawn Road. It's a small one-bedroom flat among 24 units, complete with a kitchen, laundry, shoe-polishing, and even a "dumb waiter" that brings food from the communal kitchen."
"Early ads on the Lawn Road flats with shoe cleaning, window cleaning and meal services (image source: Courtesy of the Pritchard Archive, University of East Anglia) More importantly, you're surrounded by designers and artists such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Agatha Christie, and Arthur Korn. Visitors like Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Piet Mondrian drop by often. It's almost unbelievable how many creative geniuses once lived together at the Isokon Flats in Hampstead."
Isokon Flats on Lawn Road provided 24 compact one-bedroom units with shared amenities including a communal kitchen, laundry, shoe-polishing and a dumb waiter for meals. Early advertising promoted services such as shoe and window cleaning and meal provision. The building housed prominent modernist figures including Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Agatha Christie, and Arthur Korn. Frequent visitors included Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Piet Mondrian. The living arrangement fostered concentrated creative exchange and collaboration among designers and artists within a modernist communal setting.
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