From Bauhaus flats to digital nations, creativity needs fertile ground
Press enter or click to view image in full size
From left to right: Estonia’s Tiger Leap Initiative that created digital literacy for the whole country in the 1990s, Jony Ives talking to Sam Altman at OpenAI Devday 2025, Isokon flat with prolific Bauhaus designers (image source: Yeo)
The spark of creativity at Lawn Road
Picture this: it’s 6 p.m., and you’re done with the day’s hard work as a designer. As you walk up the slopes of Hampstead Heath, you take in the sights and sounds of the community around you.
Soon, you arrive at your apartment on Lawn Road. It’s a small one-bedroom flat among 24 units, complete with a kitchen, laundry, shoe-polishing, and even a “dumb waiter” that brings food from the communal kitchen.
Early ads on the Lawn Road flats with shoe cleaning, window cleaning and meal services (image source: Courtesy of the Pritchard Archive, University of East Anglia)
More importantly, you’re surrounded by designers and artists such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Agatha Christie, and Arthur Korn. Visitors like Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Piet Mondrian drop by often.
It’s almost unbelievable how many creative geniuses once lived together at the Isokon Flats in Hampstead.
