Berthold Lubetkin is among the most important figures of modernism in Britain. Born in Georgia in 1901, he studied in Berlin and Paris, before moving to London in 1931. The following year he founded the famous Tecton practice with Architectural Association graduates Anthony Chitty, Denys Lasdun, Lindsay Drake, Michael Dugdale, Valentine Harding, Godfrey Samuel and Francis Skinner.

The Highpoint apartments, so-called because of their location on an elevated site, are one of the best examples of early International Style architecture in London. They were built in two phases: Highpoint I in 1935, and Highpoint II in 1938. In his book Modern: The Modern Movement in Britain, Alan Powers writes: “Perhaps the single most celebrated modernist building of the 1930s in London, and praised even by Le Corbusier, Highpoint I was commissioned by Sigmund Gestetner, an industrialist with a strong interest in the social role of modernism.

The footprint developed as a Cross of Lorraine, with equal arms, each containing a single flat, reached from two stair and lift cores at the intersections. The building is entered beneath the projecting end of the long axis, and the ground-floor plan bends and flows in contrast to the more rigid geometry overhead, leading to the stairs and through to the gardens beyond. “The construction in monolithic reinforced concrete was a collaboration with Ove Arup and was facilitated by lifting the shuttering by stages to form the walls. The details of servicing and fittings were meticulously thought through, producing some novel alternative solutions.”