Wells Coates (1895 – 1958) was born in Japan to a mother who had trained in architecture under Louis Sullivan. His mother encouraged his interest in the profession, although his formal training was in engineering and his first job was as a journalist for the Daily Express. Coates spent his childhood in the Far East, built his most important buildings in Britain, and moved to the United States and then Canada after the Second World War, where he spent his final days. He embraced Le Corbusier’s theory that houses should be “machines for living in” and developed some of the most progressive housing projects in London of the 1930s. In his most famous apartment block, Isokon in Hampstead, he demonstrated his theory that with a well-planned kitchen, bathroom and dressing room, one-room living should be possible. He established his own firm in 1928, and alongside Maxwell Fry he established the British wing of think-tank CIAM: Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS).