Entering the Modernist Circle: The Careers of Leslie Martin and Sadie Speig

A talk exploring the early careers of architects Leslie Martin and Sadie Speight and their connections to London's modernist circle.
About this Event

While Sir Leslie Martin had become widely known by the 1950s, thanks to the design of the Royal Festival Hall, in the 1930s he and his partner, Sadie Speight, were only beginning to establish their careers.

In April 1934, at the Mayor Gallery in London, the young architects Leslie Martin and Sadie Speight saw the paintings by Ben Nicholson for the first time. They immediately knew that Nicholson was an artist of ‘very special calibre’. Shortly after the exhibition, Martin and Speight visited Nicholson in the studio he shared with Barbara Hepworth in Hampstead. This marked the beginning of what would become a lifelong friendship and collaboration. This encounter also led to the couple’s introduction to the circle of modernists. Martin and Speight came to know many progressive thinkers and designers who lived in London or were passing through London. They began publishing on modernist subjects, including Circle and The Flat Book, in which they cited the Lawn Road flats and Highpoint as examples. This talk will trace the work of the architects Martin and Speight, focusing on the lesser-known aspects of their early careers, as explored in the newly published book Leslie Martin and Sadie Speight: Architects of Modern Britain (Lund Humphries, 2026).

Natcha Ruamsanitwong is an architectural historian and author of Leslie Martin and Sadie Speight: Architects of Modern Britain (Lund Humphries, 2026). She is the SAHGB Women’s Architectural Historian Network convenor (WAHN) and Vice-Chair of the Construction History Society. Currently, she is Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at Staffordshire and Director of Studies in Architecture and Design at Queens’ College, Cambridge.