Opportunity and persecution in the mid-20th century led to many foreign architects living and working in England. This gallery of images from the Historic England Archive illustrates buildings created by émigrés and which are recognised for their architectural and historical significance in the National Heritage List for England.
Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton
Lubetkin is one of the outstanding architects of his generation. Believed to have been born in Georgia in 1901, he arrived in England in 1931 via Berlin, Warsaw and Paris. He founded Tecton with six Architectural Association graduates in 1932 and went on to create some of England's great Modernist buildings. Lubetkin was naturalized in 1939.
Penguin Pool, London Zoo, Regent's Park, Westminster, Greater London (2010-09-17) by James O Davies, English HeritageHistoric England
The Penguin Pool at London Zoo
Lubetkin and Tecton worked on a variety of building types, including private houses, luxury and municipal flats, and zoo buildings.
At London Zoo, Lubetkin and Tecton were responsible for two buildings, the Gorilla House (1932-3) and the Penguin Pool (1934).
Read the National Heritage List entries for the Gorilla House and the Penguin Pool.
Tecton at Dudley Zoo
Dudley Zoo was created in the grounds of Dudley Castle in the 1930s. The owner, the Earl of Dudley, advised by Dr Geoffrey Vevers, the Superintendant at London Zoo, commissioned Tecton to design the zoo buildings. Twelve of Tecton's structures survive at the zoo, all of which are Listed for their architectural and historical significance.
Dudley Castle and Dudley Zoological Gardens, Dudley (1947-06-03) by Aerofilms LtdHistoric England
Dudley Castle and Dudley Zoo
This aerial photograph from 1947 shows some of the Tecton structures in the grounds of Dudley Castle.
Read the National Heritage List entry for Dudley Castle.
Brown Bear Ravine, Dudley Zoo (2019) by James O Davies, Historic EnglandHistoric England
Brown Bear Ravine at Dudley Zoo
Tecton utilised the natural features of the castle site for the positioning of its zoo structures.
Brown Bear Ravine is situated near the bottom of the steply sloping castle grounds. Set in a deep ravine, it enabled visitors to view the animals from an elevated viewing terrace.
Read the National Heritage List entry for Brown Bear Ravine.
Finsbury Health Centre, Pine Street, Finsbury, Islington, Greater London (circa 1939) by Herbert FeltonHistoric England
Finsbury Health Centre
Lubetkin believed that architecture aligned with social progress.
Built in 1935-8, Lubetkin and Tecton's health treatment centre is described as 'the finest monument to nascent clinical provision in Britain and a brilliant piece of planning'.
It was conceived as the central element to a proposed redevelopment of the Borough of Finsbury that provided baths, libraries and nurseries as well as a health centre.
Combining Modernist architecture and public health, its open plan aesthetic and use of glass bricks was designed to create a healthy, cheerful atmosphere for patients.
Read the National Heritage List entry for Finsbury Health Centre.
Spa Green Estate
Finsbury also commissioned Lubetkin and Tecton to create new accommodation to replace slum housing in the borough. A scheme for blocks of high-quality multi-storey flats was designed in 1938. War interrupted the plans and it was not until 1946 that Nye Bevan, Minister of Health and Housing laid the foundation stone. Three years later, Herbert Morrison, the deputy Prime Minister, officially opened the estate.
The entrance to Wells House, Spa Green Estate, Finsbury, Islington, Greater London (2014-04-29) by James O Davies, Historic EnglandHistoric England
Spa Green Estate
The blocks of flats at Spa Green incorporated an innovative reinforced concrete box frame structure devised by Ove Arup. This enabled Lubetkin and his assitant Carl Franck to create a patterned exterior of coloured brick, tiles, balconies, railings and grilles.
Franck was also an émigré. He was forbidden to practice as an architect by the Nazis because of his ideological differences and because his wife was Jewish. He came to England in 1937 following a recommendation to Lubetkin from Ernö Goldfinger.
Read the National Heritage List entries for the estate's Sadler House, Tunbridge House and Wells House.
Denham Film Studios, Denham Avenue, Denham, Buckinghamshire (1946-06-29) by Aerofilms LtdHistoric England
Gropius' short stay
Walter Gropius was one of the greats of modernist architecture and design. Born in Berlin in 1883, he worked for Peter Behrens and established the Bauhaus school.
Marginalised by the Nazi regime, Gropius fled to England in 1934 with the help of architect Maxwell Fry. Gropius stayed in England until 1937 when he moved to the United States.
During his two-and-a-half years in England, Gropius worked for Jack Pritchard's Isokon furniture company, and designed a number of buildings, many together with Fry, including the Denham Film Studios, built in 1936 for émigré producer and director Alexander Korda.
Read the National Heritage List entry for Denham Film Studios.
Mendelsohn and Chermayeff's seaside wonder
The De La Warr Pavilion is one of England's great Modernist seaside buildings. It was designed by an émigré partnership. Like Lubetkin, Serge Chermayeff originated from the former Russian Empire and also took up British nationality. In 1933 he went into partnership with Erich Mendelsohn, a refugee from Nazism. The Pavilion opened two years later.
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill On Sea, East Sussex (1935) by Herbert FeltonHistoric England
The De La Warr Pavilion
Chermayeff and Mendolsohn's masterpiece was the first welded-steel public building in Britain. Its building was instigated by the Earl De La Warr, Bexhill's mayor and junior minister in the National Labour Party, who wanted a new people's palace for culture and entertainment in his home town.
Read the National Heritage List entry for the De La Warr Pavilion.
Ernö Goldfinger
In 1919 the Goldfinger family fled Hungary to escape political unrest. Ernö moved to Paris where he studied, designed shops, showrooms and furniture, and mixed with the Parisian avante-garde. He married Englishwoman Ursula Blackwell in 1933 and moved to London the following year. Goldfinger eventually became a British citizen in 1945.
Murals by Gordon Cullen at Greenside School, Hammersmith and Fulham, Greater London (2017-06-28) by James O Davies, Historic EnglandHistoric England
Greenside School, Hammersmith
Goldfinger designed children's toys, exhibitions, houses, blocks of flats and offices.
He composed a school building system that incorporated a pecast reinforced concrete frame and brick infill. Two were built for the London County Council, Greenside School in Hammersmith and Brandlehow School in Putney.
At Greenside, Goldfinger commissioned the artist Gordon Cullen to produce a colourful mural to the school's entrance hall.
Read the National Heritage List entries for Greenside School and Brandlehow School.
Glenkerry House, Brownfield Estate, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, Greater London (2018-01-10) by Chris Redgrave, Historic EnglandHistoric England
Brownfield Estate, Poplar
Goldfinger also worked for London County Council on the Brownfield Estate public housing scheme.
Built in three phases in the 1960s and 70s, it included blocks of flats, houses, shop, community centre and nursery.
Le Corbusier was an influence on Goldfinger and the estate epitomises Le Corbusier's socialist idealist view of 'sun, space, greenery'.
Read the National Heritage List entries for the estate's Carradale House, Glenkerry House and Balfron Tower.
Metro Central Heights, Elephant and Castle, Southwark, Greater London (2014-07-29) by James O Davies, Historic EnglandHistoric England
Metro Central Heights, Elephant and Castle
Formerly known as Alexander Fleming House, this Constructivist-style block was built in two phases between 1959 and 1967 as offices for the Ministry of Health.
It was Goldfinger's largest project, which he considered it to be his major work.
The Ministry of Health vacated the site in 1989. In 2002 it was converted to residential use and renamed Metro Central Heights.
Read the National Heritage List entry for Metro Central Heights.
Belvedere Court, Hampstead Garden Suburb, Barnet, Greater London (2009-09-08) by Patricia Payne, English HeritageHistoric England
Belvedere Court, Hampstead Garden Suburb
Belvedere Court, a development of fifty-six flats, was built in 1937-8 for the Church Estate Commissioners to designs by Ernst Freud.
Freud had studied architecture in Vienna and Munich. He established himself in Berlin designing domestic, commercial and industiral buildings, and furniture.
Following Hitler's rise to power, Freud moved his family to England, where they became naturalized in 1939. Freud's father, Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, had fled to London from Vienna in the previous year.
Read the National Heritage List entry for Belvedere Court.
'Following the Leader (Memorial to the Children Killed in the Blitz)', Darley House, Greater London (2014-11-06) by Lucy Millson-Watkins, English HeritageHistoric England
A sculptural memorial
Peter Laszlo Peri's sculptural work enriches a number of buildings in England.
Peri was born Ladislas Weisz in Budapest in 1899. Antisemitism in Hungary led the family to change its name from Weisz to Peri before the First World War.
Peri was primarily a sculptor and artist but worked in the city architect's department in Berlin in the 1920s. In 1933 his British wife was arrested for distributing communist literature and they soon sought exile in England. Peri was naturalized in 1939.
Peri was commissioned by London County Council to produce three sculptural reliefs for housing estates in South Lambeth, including 'Following the Leader', a memorial to children killed by bombing during the Second World War.
Read the National Heritage List entries for 'Following the Leader (Memorial to the Children Killed in the Blitz)', 'Mother and Child Playing' and 'Boys Playing Football'.
Markham Moor Little Chef, West Drayton, Nottinghamshire (2010-05-18) by Steve Cole, English HeritageHistoric England
Technical innovation at Markham Moor
Hungarian-born Dr Kalman Hajnal-Kónyi moved to London from Germany in 1936. He was one of the first engineers in Britain to specialise in concrete shell roof design.
Hajnal-Kónyi worked on a number of projects with the architect Sam Scorer, who was fascinated with shell roofs.
At Marston Moor, Scorer and Hajnal-Kónyi came up with a hyperbolic praboloid design for the canopy to a petrol filling station. Built in 1960-61, this striking structure was given listed status in 2012.
Read the National Heritage List entry for the Canopy.
41 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, Westminster, Greater London (2012-06-19) by James O Davies, English HeritageHistoric England
41 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly
Built in 1961-3, 41 Albemarle Street was designed by Peter Moro as a showroom and offices for Hille furniture company.
Moro was forced to leave university in Berlin when it was discovered his grandmother was Jewish. He qualified as an architect in Zürich and travelled to England in 1936 on a visitor's permit.
Despite working as an assistant with Tecton and marrying in 1940, Moro was interned for six months in 1941. In 1947 he became a British subject.
Following his work on the Royal Festival Hall, Moro was able to establish his own practice, specializing in theatres, public housing and schools.
During the 1940s, Moro collaborated with designer Robin Day, who was also responsible for the showroom interiors at 41 Albemarle Street.
Read the National Heritage List entry for 41 Albemarle Street.
Detail of stairway, Isokon Flats, Hampstead, Camden, Greater London (2012-03-28) by James O Davies, English HeritageHistoric England
Isokon Flats, a home to émigrés
This block of thirty-six flats was designed by Canadian architect Wells Coates for Jack and Molly Pritchard. It was built in 1933-4.
Intended for single professionals, the flats attracted émigré architects and designers, whom Pritchard helped to bring to England and supported following their arrival. Reknowned occupants included Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy and Jacques and Jacqueline Groag.
Read the National Heritage List entry for the Isokon Flats.
Much of the information in this exhibit has been sourced from entries in the National Heritage List for England. Charlotte Benton's book 'A Different World: Emigre Architects in Britain 1928-1958' (1995, RIBA Heinz Gallery) has also been a useful source.
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