Wells Coates

EARLY YEARS

The oldest of six children, Wells Coates was born in Tokyo on December 17 , 1895 to Methodist missionaries Sarah Agnes Wintemute Coates ( 1864 - 1945 ) and Harper Havelock Coates ( 1865 - 1934 ).

The young man's desire to be an architect was inspired by his mother, who had herself studied architecture under Louis Sullivan and planned one of the first missionary schools in Japan {Link without Title} .

Coates spent his youth in the Far East, and voyaged around the world with his father in . He established his own firm in 1928 .

His childhood experiences in Japan would play an important role in his aesthetic sensibility that he brought to his architectural work, and this sensibility found a fitting outlet in the Modernist Movement, then current in Europe. He attended the 1933 Congrès International D'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), which produced the famous Athens Charter, and was one of the founders, with Maxwell Fry , of the Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS) , the British wing of CIAM.

ROLE AS A MODERNINST

Wells embraced Le Corbusier 's architectural mantra that buildings should be 'machines for living' (machine à habiter). The machine á habiter ideal was best-reflected in his Isokon Building (also known as Lawn Road Flats), completed in 1934 . Indeed, the architectural critic J. M. Richards suggested that he improved on Corbusier, coming "nearer to the machine á habiter than anything Corbusier ever designed". The building was compared to the exterior of an ocean liner by the novelist Agatha Christie , who lived there for a time, so clean and striking was the design {Link without Title} .

The apartment building was the brainchild of Jack and and Marcel Breuer {Link without Title} .

Isokon was ahead of its time: it won second place in Horizon Magazine's 'Ugliest Building Competition' in 1946 , and would not be recognized as one of England's most important Modernest buildings for another decade. The building fell into disrepair by the 1990's but it changed ownership in 2001 and was fully restored by 2004 .

LATER ACHIEVEMENTS

An inventive genius, Coates revelled in introducing new ideas in his work. Among his innovations was the '3-2' architectural plan, where two living rooms on one side of the building are equivalent in height to three rooms on the other side, making two units vertically on three floors. He also designed the "D-handle", a simple door handle design commonly employed, for example, in Scandinavian furniture. In 1930 he designed a studio for the British Broadcasting Corporation , and among his technical designs was a microphone stand featuring an overhead counterbalanced arm that enabled the microphone to be moved to any part of the studio while remaining prefectly balanced. The design became a standard piece of equipment at the BBC {Link without Title} .

The thirties were his most prolific era. The Isokon was immediately followed by Embassy Court , Brighton (1935) and 10 Palace Gate , Kensington (1939). These were the only apartment buildings he would design He also had several private home commissions. During World War II, he again served with the RAF, this time working on fighter aircraft development, for which he was later awarded an OBE [http://www.embassycourt.org/wc.htm .

Following World War II, he, like some other well known architects including Gropius and Breuer (by then working in America), contributed to the British post-War housing effort by introducing an early scheme for modular housing he called Room Unit Production.

He also designed a remarkable boat, called the Wingsail. It had a rigid sail design mounted on a catamaran hull. Though he formed a company to market the design, it was not a success, as both the sail and the catamaran were ahead of their time.

He is less well known for his planning work. In 1937, he undertook planning for a slum clearance in Britain (not implemented) {Link without Title} . In Canada (1952-54) he prepared plans for urban redevelopment scheme for Vancouver.

FINAL YEARS IN CANADA

Coates began coming back to Canada in the early 1950's, about the time of the Iroquois project, finally settling there in 1957. In 1955 and '56, he taught at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard with Walter Gropius but he was not happy there. He returned to Vancouver after two years, where he worked on Project 58. His last assignment was to design a monorail rapid transit system for Vancouver, dubbed the Monospan Twin-Ride System (MTRS). Once again, he was ahead of his time. The project was abandoned, but would be rejuvenated years later in another form known as SkyTrain .

Wells Coates died of a heart attack in Vancouver on June 17 , 1958 .

The University of East Anglia Library in Norwich has materials relating to his life and work. A list of the holdings is available on the WWW Additional reference mateials from the CIAM period are held at the CIAM Belgian Section of the Getty Research Institute.[http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/finding_aids/ciam_m7.html

Coates' daughter, Laura Cohn, published a biography of her father called ''The Door to a Secret Room'' (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1999) ISBN 1-84014-695-8.

REFERENCES

Welles Coates

Welles Coates - Inventions

EXTERNAL LINKS

Biography from the Open University

Embassy Court

Information About

Wells Coates