The distant prehistory of modern architecture in the UK is remembered as well for the things it did not do as those it did. Modernists such as Wells Coates or the firebrands ofTecton spent their day jobs designing blocks of luxury flats such as Highpoint or Isokon, or the villas for psychoanalysts in north London that formed most of the portfolios of Maxwell Fry or Connell, Ward and Lucas. What they also did is at least equally significant: forming the MARS - the Modern Architecture ReSearch - group, which lobbied for Modernist design, replanning of districts and social housing. MARS produced an influential and exceptionally radical plan for London, which was absolutely unbuildable and politically implausible, but had an enormous influence on the actual replanning that took place after 1945.
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