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Saturday 11am - 4pm Sunday 11am - 4pm

Isokon Gallery

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Isokon Gallery

Experience the remarkable story of the Isokon apartment building, opened in 1934 as a progressive experiment in new ways of urban living.

19/06/2026

Swedish wallpaper company Borås Tapeter has launched a collection called Alvar Aalto MIT, inspired by the Baker House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just across the Charles River from Boston, which Alvar and Aino Aalto designed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1940s. Alvar Aalto got the commission to design the dormitory building in 1946 while he was a professor at MIT. While Alvar was in the United States teaching, Aino stayed in Finland to manage the interior design company Artek, where she was the artistic director. Aino Aalto was responsible for executing the details of the building's interior spaces. The Baker House was completed in 1949, the same year as when Aino Aalto passed away.

18/06/2026

Today we are having the trees around Isokon trimmed back, as some of them have grown so much that they are touching the building and staining the facade green. One brave tree surgeon is up a very tall ladder!

17/06/2026

Palace of the Ether is a brand new book by Elizabeth Darling, available now from the Isokon Gallery and isokongallery.org

This book is about the architecture and design of broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s, examining the buildings which the BBC occupied in its founding decades, with a particular focus on Broadcasting House in London. Borrowing from the architectural writer Christopher Hussey’s characterisation of Broadcasting House as a ‘palace of the ether’ Elizabeth Darling asks how the immaterial medium of the broadcast was given material and spatial form by the BBC, and the engineers, architects and designers whom they commissioned. It offers a detailed account of the work of Val Myer, who designed the exterior and shell of the new building, and the team of architects who designed the studio interiors; Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates, Edward Maufe, Raymond McGrath and Dorothy Warren. In documenting the design of Broadcasting House, and the responses to it, Palace of the Ether offers new insights into British architectural culture at a pivotal moment in the profession’s history.

$We’re proud to announce the publication of ‘Design, displacement & donkeys: the fractured life of Egon Riss’.Viennese ar...$

15/06/2026

We’re proud to announce the publication of ‘Design, displacement & donkeys: the fractured life of Egon Riss’.

Viennese architect-designer Egon Riss (1901–64) is one of the modern movement’s more enigmatic characters: renowned for the characterful Penguin Donkey and Gull he created for Isokon Furniture, but little-known in Britain for his significant contributions to architecture and industry.

Published by the Isokon Gallery – and now available for preorder on our website – this richly illustrated book for the first time brings together the complete story of Riss’s life: his acclaimed debut in Red Vienna, his wartime displacement to London, and his monumental works for the post-war Scottish coal industry.

All proceeds support the Isokon Gallery.

£25
160 pages, soft cover
Preorder on our website isokongallery.org
Ships end of June, 2026

14/06/2026

We are showing an Isokon flat today 11am to 1pm, the museum is open as usual 11am to 4pm.

13/06/2026

Los Angeles County Museum Of Art (LACMA) has several designs by Marcel Breuer on display, including this original 1930s Isokon Long Chair. Photo by Michael Wright.

12/06/2026

Visited Kingston School of Art, where the furniture design students do an annual project on Isokon. This attractive desk tidy is directly inspired by the Egon Riss designed Gull and Donkey.

09/06/2026

Isokon Flats, c. 1978, when the building was owned by Camden Council. We've never managed to find out what happened to the sign!

06/06/2026

Today we returned to The Homewood in Esher with a group of Isokon Gallery volunteers, and were given an extensive tour of the house and garden. This 1938 masterpiece by architect Patrick Gwynne remained his home until 2003. He was only 24 years old when the building was completed. Thank you to the National Trust for hosting us.

05/06/2026

"New Furniture Incorporated presents, for the first time in the United States furniture designed by the distinguished Finnish architects, Alvar and Aino Aalto, and made in Finland under their supervision." The company New Furniture Incorporated was founded in 1936 but only signed a contract to sell Aalto furniture in March 1938. This was the only catalogue produced by the company with an accompanying price list issued in January 1939. The company was dissolved later in 1939 after being up for sale for some months. The back cover features an installation photograph from the MoMA exhibition 'Alvar Aalto: Architecture and Furniture'.

Address

Isokon Building
London
NW32XD

Opening Hours

Saturday	11am - 4pm
Sunday	11am - 4pm

Telephone

+447713507018

Website

https://isokongallery.org/

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