The Door to a Secret Room

"Forty years after his death, Wells Coates is seen as a seminal figure in the modern movement in architecture in Britain. His blocks of flats, his shop and office designs, houses, interiors, radios, and other industrial designs, are evidence of his commitment to a functional aesthetic and of his refusal to compromise his own high standards. Wells Coates's daughter Laura Cohn has written this book to try to illustrate the conflicts, qualities and disappointments of an extraordinary man. The book is a portrait rather than a biography. The chapters, each with a different theme, do not follow a chronological sequence, but the book has a chronological backbone, beginning with Coates's upbringing in Japan and ending with his death in Vancouver in 1958. In between it traces the beliefs that guided his working life, his ambitions, successes, and disappointments. The unhappy story of his marriage shows one part of his life experience; relationships with friends, colleagues and enemies reveal another side. The longest chapter, Lawn Road Flats, is of both personal and professional interest: it provides an absorbing account of how plans evolved for Coates's first block of flats, and of the relationships between the architect and his clients. The story is of special interest in the light of the controversies surrounding the ownership of the flats by the London Borough of Camden and doubts and fears about the future of the building. A man who in the words of one of his colleagues was often 'his own worst enemy', Wells Coates, for all the troubles of his public and private life, kept an admirable purity in his work as an architect designer. He lived a life that was flawed, as all lives are. His story is of interest not just to architects and designers, but to anyone who might wish to look at the example of one man's struggles and dilemmas in our complex century"--Bookjacket.