Isokon Gallery

The lowdown

The Isokon Flats on Lawn Road are one of the most important modernist buildings in Britain, a streamlined white block of tiny experimental apartments built in 1934 to test a radical new way of living. In the old garage at the foot of the building, a small free gallery tells the whole extraordinary story.

And what a story it is. The flats housed Bauhaus designers fleeing Europe, the writer Agatha Christie, and as it later emerged a nest of Soviet spies, all in a building designed around the idea that you could live well with almost no possessions. The gallery is small but the tale is huge, and it costs nothing.