Designer Desire: Wells Coates

Born in Tokyo, Wells Coates (1895-1958) was a British modernist architect and designer of Canadian parentage. Greatly inspired by the likes of Le Corbusier, he designed a number of public and private commercial and residential buildings.

My first proper introduction to Wells Coates was when I was at the University of Brighton. I did a summer school course in photography where I focussed on capturing images of Embassy Court (seen at the top of our montage above) – my favourite building in the city – located on the seafront in Hove. It was the mid-1990s at the time, and the building (erected in 1935) was in a very sorry state; the 11-storey façade was rusty, crumbling and strewn with ugly satellite dishes – but its beauty still shone through. Today it’s a des-res and one of the 72 flats would set you back a cool half a million pounds and more!

In 1934, he designed the Isokon / Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead for Molly and Jack Pritchard. The couple and their family lived at the address, with some of the other 32 flats being occupied by design greats of the time; Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Maholy-Nagy.

The following year – with David Bartholomew Pleydell-Bouverie – Wells Coates designed the Sunspan Houses. Fifteen of them were built; including one in Portsmouth, another in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, three on Woodlands Avenue in New Maldon, Essex, Chadwell St Mary, Essex and Esher in Surrey.

In 1939, he designed 10 Palace Gate, a block of luxury flats in London’s Kensington for construction company, Randall Bell. Flats currently command rents of over £1,000 per week. A space in the building’s underground car park is currently for sale for the princely sum of £65,000.

He designed the Telecinema – one of the 1951 Festival of Britain buildings. Apparently it was:

…the first theatre in the world in which big screen television, 3-dimensional pictures and tereophonic (sic) sound took its place on par with the cinema… spectators wearing (the) special stereoscopic spectacles…

The woven upholstery fabric for the Telekinema’s seating was designed by Lucienne Day in 1951.⁠⁠

In addition to buildings, he designed office furniture for Kingfisher Limited of West Bromwich, some examples are included in our montage above. He also created 9 models of radio for Ekco including the round Bakelite AD65 (1934), AD75 (1940), A22 (1945) and rectangular A33 RadioTime (1946).

There are a number of books that investigate the man and his works. His daughter, Laura Cohn, authored The Door to a Secret Room: A Portrait of Wells Coates. There’s a 1970s monograph written by Sherban Cantacuzino and a more recent one by Elizabeth Darling.

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Additional image credits:
Artnet | V&A

Designer Desire: Mies van der Rohe

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Last week we featured a gorgeous Detroit townhouse designed by a very famous architect. It was only then that we realised that we’d never really highlighted him – just the occasional mention in passing about some of the furniture that he designed.

Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) is probably the most influential modernist architect to have ever lived – and we’re not saying that lightly. The skyscraper would not be what it is today without his forward-thinking ideas. The concept drawing (first image below) was created with the idea of using soaring glass and steel on the outside of a building – something that had never been done before. It was 1921 and the architectural world wasn’t ready; the design he submitted was unsuccessful.

He was a contemporary of other eminent Bauhaus architects and designers such as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy. He become director of the Bauhaus in 1930, remaining until he emigrated to Chicago in 1937 to become head of the architecture department at Illinois Institute of Technology.

You get an understanding of Mies van der Rohe, his methods and his beliefs from some of the quotes that have been attributed to him:

We must be as familiar with the functions of our building as with our materials. We must learn what a building can be, what it should be, and also what it must not be

Architecture has the power to create order out of unholy confusion

We’ve selected just a few of jis many and varied ground-breaking buildings; he’s designed houses, apartment blocks, a kiosk, a petrol station and a public library.

We’ve placed them in chronological order, according to the date they were completed, to illustrate his progression.

Unsuccessful 1921 design entry for the Friedrichstrasse skyscraper competition

German Pavilion designed for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain

Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic. Built between 1929 & 1930

Interior of Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic

Kiosk built in 1932 as part of the Bauhaus buildings, Dessau

Landhaus Lemke, built in 1933 in Alt-Hohenschönhausen, Berlin

Farnsworth House, designed & built between 1945 and 1951 in Plano, Illinois

Interior of Farnsworth House, designed & built between 1945 and 1951 in Plano, Illinois

860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, completed in 1951 and situated on the Shore of Lake Michigan in Streeterville, Chicago, Illinois

S. R. Crown Hall (built 1950–1956) - College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois — S. R. Crown Hall (built 1950–1956) – College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois

Seagram Building, 375 Park Avenue, Manhattan, New York City. Completed in 1958

Gas station, Nun's Island, Montreal - 1969 — Gas station, Nun’s Island, Montreal – 1969

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington DC, completed in 1972

Additional image credits:

MOMA | Wikiarquitectura | Wikipedia

Get their look: Mies van der Rohe Detroit townhouse

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We’ve just learned about a fabulous Mid-century Modern housing estate in Michigan. The photo above is of a Mies van der Rohe Detroit townhouse; located in the city’s historic Lafayette Park.

Completed in 1963, there are a total of 162 three-storey townhouses and a further 24 two-storey court houses. These homes are owned and operated as a co-operative. As well as the town and court houses, Lafayette Park consists of a further 3 components designed by the architect; the Plaisance (a public park), the Pavillion and the East and West Towers. With an area covering 46 acres, it’s the world’s largest Mies van de Rhoe project. Interspersed between the housing are integrated children’s play areas, open space meadows, and pedestrian walkways. There’s also a school and retail outlets within the development.

In 1996, in recognition of its importance in the history of architecture and urban renewal, the Mies van der Rohe Residential District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 2015, Lafayette Park was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Mies van der Rohe Detroit townhouse units come up for sale fairly seldom, and don’t come cheap – especially if it’s a courtyard unit which boasts the addition of an outside area. One of these would set you back about $600,000… with steep monthly maintenance fees of around $800-$1,400.

Get their look

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Cube glass terrarium

3-piece peekaboo acrylic nesting table set

George Mulhauser Plycraft lounge chair

Bertoia Diamond armchair

Barcelona low coffee table

12-light sputnik chandelier

Cube glass terrarium

3-piece peekaboo acrylic nesting table set

George Mulhauser Plycraft lounge chair

Bertoia Diamond armchair

Barcelona low coffee table

12-light sputnik chandelier

Cube glass terrarium

3-piece peekaboo acrylic nesting table set

George Mulhauser Plycraft lounge chair

Bertoia Diamond armchair

Barcelona low coffee table

12-light sputnik chandelier

Designer Desire: Richard Koppe

Richard Koppe (1916-1973) was an American modernist artist, designer and educator. In the late 1930s, Koppe attended the New Bauhaus in Chicago where he was taught by László Moholy-Nagy. You can really see the tutor’s influence on the pupil’s style.

For ages we’ve hankered after a menu he designed in 1948 for Well of the Sea restaurant located in the basement of Hotel Sherman, Chicago. Examples appear on eBay occasionally – but they are never cheap!

He produced other designs for the restaurant including 5 impressive ‘glow in the dark’ wall murals, coloured recessed back-lighting and kinetic mobiles. A range of crockery was produced for the restaurant by Shenango in 1953 using his designs. Someone on Zazzle is currently producing exact replicas of this restaurant-ware; putting it to china, melamine and textile home accessories.

We have an illustration painted by Cal Dunn of one of Koppe’s Well of the Sea murals in one of our vintage cookbooks, ‘The Ford Treasury of Favourite Recipes from Famous Eating Places‘. We’ve also found a couple of contemporary black & white photographs of the restaurant here and here.

Richard Koppe exhibited widely at international institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania Academy in Philadelphia, the Royal Academy of Art in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

He also taught for many years as Head of Visual Design and Fine Arts at the Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and later as Professor of Art at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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Additional image credits:

Art in America magazine | Corbett vs Dempsey | Elmhurst Art Museum | Invaluable | Flickr

H is for Home Harbinger

Tag: modernism

Designer Desire: Wells Coates

Designer Desire: Mies van der Rohe

Get their look: Mies van der Rohe Detroit townhouse

Get their look

Designer Desire: Richard Koppe