London's 2 International Style buildings represent the movement's arrival on English shores. Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton's Penguin Pool at London Zoo — interlocking helical ramps of reinforced concrete — is International Style at its most playful, pure geometry serving an unlikely programme. Serge Chermayeff and Erich Mendelsohn's Cohen House transported the European avant-garde to the English coast: white rendered walls, horizontal window bands, a flat roof, and an open plan that dissolves the boundary between interior and garden.
Both buildings were designed by emigré architects who brought Continental ideas to a Britain that was still largely building in brick and stone. Their influence helped establish the vocabulary that would define British Modernism for decades.
