Early life: Japan, Canada, and an engineer's training
Wells Wintemute Coates was born in Tokyo on 17 December 1895, the eldest of six children of Canadian Methodist missionaries. The detail matters, because Coates himself never let it go: throughout his life he traced his architecture back to his Japanese childhood. His mother, Sarah Agnes Wintemute Coates, had trained as an architect — a pupil of Louis Sullivan in Chicago — and it was she who first turned his mind toward building. From the Japanese world around him he absorbed a sensibility that would surface, decades later, in his architecture: an instinct for simplicity, lightness, modular order, and the careful use of small spaces.
In 1913 the family moved to Vancouver. Coates enrolled to study engineering — not architecture — taking a combined BA and BSc with first-class honours at the University of British Columbia, his studies interrupted by the First World War, in which he served first as a Canadian gunner and then trained as a pilot with the nascent Royal Air Force. He then crossed the Atlantic to complete a PhD in engineering at the University of London in 1924. This engineering foundation is the key to everything that follows: Coates approached buildings not as compositions to be decorated but as structures to be solved.
Journalism, shops, and the road to architecture
Coates did not walk straight into architecture. In the early-to-mid 1920s he worked as a journalist for the Daily Expressin London and Paris — an experience that introduced him to the European avant-garde and to the world of modern design just as it was taking shape on the Continent. Drawn increasingly to design, he began producing interiors, most notably a series of crisp, modern shopfronts for the Cresta Silks company that were widely published and admired in the architectural press. The shops launched his reputation, and in 1930 he established his own practice.
The Modern Movement in Britain: MARS, the BBC, and the EKCO radio
By the early 1930s Coates had become the most energetic advocate of modern architecture in Britain. He was a close follower of Le Corbusier's conviction that a house should be a machine à habiter — a machine for living — and he set about importing that conviction into a sceptical country. In 1933 he co-founded, with Maxwell Fry, the MARS Group(Modern Architectural Research Group), the British wing of the international modernist body CIAM, and it was Coates who supplied its deliberately scientific-sounding name. He attended the 1933 CIAM congress that produced the Athens Charter, and was a member of the artists' group Unit One. He wrote articles, gave broadcasts, organised meetings, and made allies — and in doing so helped will a British modern movement into existence.
He was also building a parallel career as a designer. His interiors for the BBC's broadcasting studios in London (1932) and Newcastle drew directly on his engineering background. And in 1934 he produced the design for which he is, to many, best remembered: the EKCO model AD-65 radio, a circular Bakelite cabinet for E. K. Cole Ltd that remains one of the defining objects of twentieth-century industrial design and sits today in the V&A's permanent collection.
For Coates, designing a radio and designing a building were the same kind of work — the intelligent shaping of a modern object around modern materials and modern needs.
The Isokon Building (1934)
Coates's first and most celebrated building came from his association with Jack and Molly Pritchard, the design entrepreneurs behind the Isokon company. For them he designed the Isokon Building — the Lawn Road Flats — in Hampstead, completed in 1934: a reinforced-concrete block of minimum flats served by cantilevered external "running decks," conceived as a working demonstration that modern architecture could change the way people lived.
It became the most intellectually charged address in London. When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus in 1933, several of its leading figures came to Britain and settled at Lawn Road: Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuerall lived there, and Agatha Christie kept a flat for years. The architecture critic J. M. Richards judged that Coates had come closer to Le Corbusier's ideal of the machine for living than Le Corbusier himself ever had. It is the subject of our Isokon Building architecture guide, and connects directly to the story of the Bauhaus and its founder, Walter Gropius.
Embassy Court (1935)
The Isokon was followed immediately by Embassy Court (1935), an eleven-storey block of luxury flats on the Brighton seafront — a far bolder and more public statement than the discreet Hampstead block. Rising sheer above the Regency terraces around it like a great ocean liner, Embassy Court featured England's first penthouse suites and brought uncompromising modernism to one of the country's most conservative seaside settings. It is explored in full in our Embassy Court architecture guide.
10 Palace Gate and the end of the apartment buildings
Coates's third and final block of flats was 10 Palace Gate in Kensington (1939), famous for its ingenious "3-2" sectional planning — an interlocking arrangement in which three storeys of rooms on one side of the building correspond to two taller storeys on the other, allowing generous living rooms and economical bedrooms within a single structure. It is the purest demonstration of Coates the engineer-architect, solving the puzzle of the section in a way no one had before. These three buildings — Isokon, Embassy Court, and Palace Gate — were the only apartment buildings he ever designed, and all three survive.
Designer, inventor, and mentor
Coates never confined himself to architecture. With David Pleydell-Bouverie he designed the Sunspan House, a mass-producible modern house shown at the 1934 Ideal Home Exhibition. He went on producing radios, heaters, clocks, and furniture for much of his career. He even designed a catamaran with a rigid "Wingsail," decades ahead of its time. And his office was a training ground for the next generation: the young Patrick Gwynne (later architect of The Homewood) and Denys Lasdun (later architect of the National Theatre) both passed through it.
During the Second World War Coates served with the RAF, working on fighter-aircraft development — including the plywood-bodied de Havilland Vampire jet — for which he was appointed OBE in 1944. The same year he was made a Royal Designer for Industry; he had been elected a Fellow of the RIBA in 1939.
The later years: post-war housing, the Telekinema, and Canada
Like Gropius and Breuer, Coates turned after the war to the problem of industrialised housing, developing schemes for prefabricated, modular "room units" that he was never able to get built. His last significant British work was the Telekinema for the 1951 Festival of Britain — a building designed to show large-screen television and stereoscopic film, which outlived the festival as the first home of the National Film Theatre. In 1955–56 he taught at Harvard, once again alongside Gropius, and in 1956 he returned to Vancouver, where he worked on planning and transit projects until his death on 17 June 1958.
Key buildings and designs
Cresta Silks shops (from the late 1920s) — modern shopfront and interior designs that launched his career.
BBC broadcasting studios, London and Newcastle (1932) — acoustically and technically advanced interiors.
EKCO AD-65 radio (1934) — the iconic circular Bakelite radio; V&A permanent collection.
Isokon Building (Lawn Road Flats), Hampstead (1934) — his masterpiece; reinforced-concrete minimum flats; Grade I listed.
Embassy Court, Brighton (1935) — eleven-storey seafront block; England's first penthouses; Grade II* listed.
Sunspan House (with David Pleydell-Bouverie, 1934) — a mass-producible modern house.
10 Palace Gate, Kensington (1939) — the ingenious "3-2" sectional apartment block; Grade II* listed.
Telekinema (1951) — Festival of Britain cinema; first home of the National Film Theatre.
Influence and legacy
Coates' reputation has followed an unusual arc. Celebrated in the 1930s, he was all but forgotten in the post-war decades, when modernism became associated with shoddy tower blocks and his subtle, hand-finished early work fell out of fashion. His rehabilitation began in 1978 with Sherban Cantacuzino's monograph, and has risen steadily since: the Isokon Building is now Grade I listed, Embassy Court has been triumphantly restored, and Coates is recognised as one of the true pioneers of British modernism.
What sets him apart is the synthesis at the heart of his work — the meeting of an engineer's rigour, a designer's eye, and the spare, modular sensibility he carried from his Japanese childhood. He proved that the Modern Movement could take root in Britain not as a foreign import but as something genuinely original. And he did it, characteristically, by building less than almost anyone — and influencing more.
Frequently asked questions about Wells Coates
Who was Wells Coates?
Wells Coates (1895–1958) was a Canadian architect, designer, and engineer who became one of the leading pioneers of modern architecture in Britain. He is best known for the Isokon Building in Hampstead and Embassy Court in Brighton, and for the iconic EKCO Bakelite radio.
What is Wells Coates famous for?
He is famous for bringing International Modernism to Britain — above all through the Isokon Building (Lawn Road Flats) of 1934 and Embassy Court, Brighton, of 1935 — and for co-founding the MARS Group, the British wing of the modernist organisation CIAM. As an industrial designer he is celebrated for the round Bakelite EKCO AD-65 radio.
Was Wells Coates trained as an architect?
No — Coates trained as an engineer, taking a degree at the University of British Columbia and a PhD in engineering at the University of London in 1924. He came to architecture and design in his thirties, and his engineering background shaped his whole approach to building.
Where was Wells Coates born?
He was born in Tokyo, Japan, on 17 December 1895, to Canadian Methodist missionary parents, and spent his childhood there before moving to Canada in 1913. He always credited his Japanese upbringing as a key influence on his design sensibility.
What buildings did Wells Coates design?
His three apartment buildings — all of which survive — are the Isokon Building (Hampstead, 1934), Embassy Court(Brighton, 1935), and 10 Palace Gate (Kensington, 1939). He also designed the BBC's broadcasting studios, the Sunspan House, and the Telekinema for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
What is the EKCO radio?
The EKCO AD-65 is a circular Bakelite radio Coates designed in 1934 for E. K. Cole Ltd. One of the most admired industrial designs of the twentieth century, it is held in the V&A's permanent collection and is often cited as having defined the look of radio design for years afterwards.
Where can I see Wells Coates's buildings?
The Isokon Building stands on Lawn Road, Hampstead (its Gallery is open on selected days); Embassy Court stands on the seafront at Brighton; and 10 Palace Gate is in Kensington. All three are listed buildings and remain in residential use.
Sources and further reading
- Wikipedia — 'Wells Coates' — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Coates — Biography and complete works
- Sherban Cantacuzino — Wells Coates: A Monograph (Gordon Fraser, 1978) — the standard study of the architect
- Elizabeth Darling — Wells Coates (RIBA Publishing, Twentieth Century Architects series, 2012) — modern critical biography
- Canadian Centre for Architecture — Wells Coates fonds — https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/archives/379537/wells-coates-fonds — archive of drawings, designs, and papers
- Historic England — National Heritage List for England — listings for the Isokon Building, Embassy Court, and 10 Palace Gate
- Embassy Court — embassycourt.org.uk — history of the building and its architect
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