Interviews for the chairman of the new body are likely to take place later this month. Names being touted for the role include the director of this year’s Glasgow architecture festival Deyan Sudjic, Sunday Times architecture correspondent Hugh Pearman, Architects Journal editor Paul Finch and Architecture Foundation director Lucy Musgrave. So far so good.But concerns are surfacing that the panel’s remit does not include a discussion of the new body’s role as champion for architecture, which looks like being little more than the RFAC with grant-giving bells on. He then set up an implementation group to advise on how the new body would best fulfil its remit.
The implementation group had its first meeting this month and consists of figures well respected within the industry.

At last the Labour Government seemed to be making good on some of the promises it made in its manifesto. Smith said the new body -with the working title of Architecture Commission – would “combine the design review role of the Royal Fine Art Commission with an enhanced regional dimension and significant grant-giving powers”. When Culture Secretary Chris Smith announced in December his intention to create a new body charged with “championing good architecture”, the sigh of relief from the architectural community was audible. But, says, Allen Cunningham: “Councils responsibilities are not purely social, they’re cultural too. They are always prepared to look after a 12th century church, but it is just not sustainable to argue that only pre-20th century buildings are worth preserving.”. But, as the recent upgrading of Isokon to grade I shows, it is a course English Heritage and the Culture Department seem determined to pursue. “We would want to restore it, reopen the Isobar and rent the flats and bed-sits out to people on low incomes who wanted to live there and are prepared to accept that the accommodation is not up to modern space standards.”Councils owning modern architecture will always argue it is the very things for which they were listed – their experimental nature, innovative forms and construction techniques – that makes them too expensive to keep going.Listing experimental modern buildings remains highly contentious; listing public sector experimental modern buildings is even more problematic.

But he is a realist, and says: “If it proves impossible to repair it in its original arrangement, then other means will have to be sought.”The Peabody Trust and Dickon Robinson have no doubts about the answer at Isokon, but recognise it would not produce the sort of windfall return the council would like from the building’s sale. McAslan made the building watertight and created a show flat from the one formerly lived in by Agatha Christie.He favours the plan to sell Isokon to a private developer who could restore it. It needs a high degree of engineering, structurally and acoustically, to make it acceptable today.”His practice became involved at Isokon in 1995, when English Heritage pressurised Camden into doing something about its deteriorating condition. So alternative solutions will have to be sought.Better than most people, architect John McAslan knows what it will take to return Isokon to use “What’s there is pretty basic and in a poor state All flats are in varying degrees of dereliction,” he says “It’ll take time and be a costly job to restore it. A market solution to this would be to create larger flats by knocking down partition walls and sell them at a premium But this approach is ruled out by Isokon’s listing.

As well as their dilapidated state, the flats are very small, having been conceived as “minimum flats” designed to offer a cheap alternative to digs. “I hope it won’t need to become a cause celebre but Camden should be aware that influential eyes are watching what it does,” he says.Despite this, there are significant problems at Isokon. But Keeling has a particular problem in its location, whereas Isokon is in a bourgeois area and can be desirable within that context.”He says Isokon is “as close to avant-garde as England will ever get” and it is worth saving for its technical innovations, modern movement architecture and communitarian social programme. It is also better located than Keeling House, smaller, and it would cost less to restore, pounds 2m being the estimated figure.Isokon also has powerful friends: architect Sir Norman Foster has said it is one of his favourite buildings; Lady Patty Hopkins, wife of Sir Michael – both architects – went to a recent meeting about the building’s future; Lord Rogers apologised for not being able to attend; a trust has been set up to rescue it; and modern architecture conservation group DoCoMoMo UK is on the case.DoCoMoMo UK co-ordinator Allen Cunningham admits: “Keeling House and Isokon have similar problems in that any prospect of selling or letting has to take into account the high cost of repairs.

If this attempt to save it fails, Tower Hamlets will have to apply for listed building consent to demolish it.The situation at Isokon Flats is more optimistic. Like its illustrious original tenants, the building remains popular. “It undermines the whole neighbourhood to have this disintegrating monster in the middle of it,” Robinson admits So, the future of Keeling House remains in the balance. This made the bid too expensive as far as the fund was concerned.”Since then there have been other rescue attempts at Keeling House: none has resulted in any work on the building, that continues to decay. “We were cautious about long-term maintenance and decided it was not acceptable to skimp on it. Confidential negotiations are being conducted with a developer, but significant doubts remain about the viability of restoring the building, which would cost several millions.Dickon Robinson, development director of the Peabody Trust, says: “There is a dilemma involved with these interesting buildings, and it is a fundamental question: do you save them by carving them up and flogging them off, or treat them as special cases and return them to their original state?”In 1996, Robinson and the trust attempted to do the latter by restoring Keeling House and bringing it back into use as rented accommodation with an unsuccessful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund.