Previously, photographer Baker took us on an odyssey through two icons of Modernism in the UK by Wells Coates: London’s Isokon building and Brighton’s Embassy Court. Now, he’s teamed up with director Alex Simpson to create a mini-documentary, The Legacy of Wells Coates.
The Isokon was once home to Soviet spies Agatha Christie and Modernist émigrés, including the founder of the Bauhaus school, Walter Gropius. These residents might be long gone, but Wells Coates’ building is still a thriving community – and a Grade I-listed gem.
Photographer Baker and director Alex Simpson spoke to its current inhabitants for the film, including Skandium founder Magnus Englund.
‘The Isokon Building doesn’t just have a history that ended back then [in the 1930s]…It’s an ongoing story,’ says Englund, who lived in the building’s penthouse apartment.
Brighton’s Embassy Court was another design game-changer in its day, standing proud beside the sea. Both buildings were pulled back from the brink of dereliction in the 1990s and have been restored and adapted for 21st-century life.
‘There’s been an arc of a story for this building – and that arc is still in the ascendant,’ says Coates’ grandson Matt Black.
