I can think of a few estate agents who appear in books, the most obvious one being Frank Bascombe, philosopher star of the series of novels by Richard Ford that began with The Sportswriter. But a book by an estate agent? This would have been a tricky prospect before I was given The Modern House, the authors of which include Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill, the founding directors of an estate agency that specialises in selling eye-catching modern residential architecture (it, too, is named the Modern House, and if you’re in the market for a certain kind of property porn, you’ll already be aware of its website).
The Modern House is based on the agency’s by now rather amazing archive of images, and it is both a lovely thing to look at and an excellent read (the third of its authors is Jonathan Bell, the design writer). Some of the structures it describes will be well known even to those who don’t think of themselves as architecture nerds: Berthold Lubetkin’s Highpoint I and II in Highgate, for instance, or the Isokon building in Hampstead, designed by Wells Coates in 1934, and the former home of Agatha Christie, Walter Gropius and Paul Nash (for more on its inhabitants, incidentally, try David Burke’s 2014 book, The Lawn Road Flats: Spies, Writers and Artists). But its real interest lies in more obscure buildings like the Winter House in north London, designed by John Winter in 1967.
Glimpsing inside this building again has a particular resonance for me. In its top floor reception room, with its extraordinary view of Highgate cemetery, I interviewed its architect (and then owner) for my own book; Winter, who died in 2012, shortly after our meeting, had known Alison Smithson, one of my subjects. It was a privilege to sit with him in the light-filled and serene home he’d dreamed up for himself, and I am so glad now to have a photograph to remember it by.
The Modern House is published by Artifice Books on Architecture (£24.95). To order a copy go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846
