Isokon Building

The Isokon Building, also known as the Isokon Flats or the Lawn Road Flats is a block of apartments located on Lawn Road in the Belsize Park dstrict of the London Borough of Camden. Agatha Christie and her husband Max Mallowan moved into apartments in this building in 1940 at the height of the blitz during World War 2 shortly after their house at 58 Sheffield Terrace was damaged by bombing (they had fortunately been out of town during that raid). When Max was posted to the Middle-east around 1942, Christie continued to live at the Lawn Road Flats while writing and also working as a dispenser at University College Hospital.

The Isokon Building was originally designed by Canadian engineer Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard in a minimalist modernist style. Apartments in the buulding were also fitted out with furniture of a modernist design made by Pritchard's Isokon company. During World War 2, the building owners marketed the property as one of the safest in London because it had a reinforced concrete structure and also because they had it painted dark brown to serve as camouflage. After the bombing of Sheffield Terrace, the Mallowans at first rented unit 22 and moved in in Mar 1941. Subsequently, Max was posted to the Middle-east, Christie moved into unit 17. Max returned to Britain in May 1945 and the couple continued to stay at the Lawn Road Flats until 1947. During this time they also rented unit 16 and got permission to knock down the dividing wall and amalgamate the two units.

The Isokon Building hosted many celebrity residents, most notably Bauhaus émigré architects Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy. There was also a spy-ring operating in the building, with Arnold Deutsch, a key Soviet agent, living there in the 1930s. However the belief that "N or M" was inspired by Christie meeting Soviet spies at the building is not plausible. "N or M" was written much earlier before she moved in and when she arrived, Deutsch had already moved out.

In 1972 the building was sold to Camden London Borough Council and suffered a decline into the 1990s and became derelict. In 1999 it became Grade I listed and was subsequently refurbished in 2001, restoring it to its 1930s miminalist look: Christie described the building as one which looks like a liner and ought really to have funnels. While the units are private and cannot be visited, part of the refurbishment involved the creation of the Isokon Gallery, an exhibition space created in the former garage with displays about the story of the building, the social and artistic life of its residents and Isokon furniture company. Among its special exhbitions is one running from 2021-2022 about the life and work of Agatha Christie.