Wells Coates belonged to the MARS(Modern Architectural Research) Group and was associated with a number of radical architects who contributed to modernist architecture in Britain. One of these architects was Ernö Goldfinger.
His Willow Road differs from the modernist buildings of Wells Coates and his contemporaries in that it is Georgian rather than white-box in appearance. The reinforced concrete construction allows for free and flexible partitioning, space and light. In other words, it embodied modernism in its essence, not modernist architecture as a style. It is the pursuit of rationality.