Modernist Hampstead
Walking tour and private visit to the Isokon Gallery
Wednesday 15 August 2018 11am - 3.30pm
Meet at Hampstead tube station, outside the High Street entrance. The tour finishes at the Isokon Gallery, near Belsize Park tube station.
£65. Includes light lunch, glass of wine, tea and coffee and a private introduction to the Isokon Gallery.
Friends of the RA book first
Booking and attending Friends excursions and events
Join our guided tour and discover the revolutionary modernist homes and idealistic architecture that defined leafy Hampstead in the 1930s.
Arguably the single most important architectural movement in the 20th century, much of modernist architecture in the 1930s was characterised by asymmetrical compositions, reinforced concrete, flat roofs and an absence of ornament. True modernist houses were built from a concrete shell, allowing flexibility of space in the interiors.
This Hampstead tour includes the exteriors of The Sun House by Maxwell Fry, a house designed in 1934 for singer, Gracie Field, by architect R L Page and the house at 66 Frognall by Connell, Ward and Lucas, which was once described as “the greatest act of vandalism ever perpetrated” but is now hailed as one of the most distinctive modernist buildings of its era.
Our guided walk also takes us past some more recent examples of architects’ homes, as well as earlier buildings of note such as the neo-Baroque style University College School and the Regency St John’s Church in Downshire Hill, before we finish at the iconic Isokon flats near Belsize Park.
We stop for lunch at a local restaurant before heading to the Isokon Gallery, which is opening especially for us to have a private introductory talk on the remarkable story of the creation of the Isokon building, the pioneering modern apartment block that opened in 1934 as an experiment in new ways of urban living.
This event will also be held on 11 September