Hermann Zweigenthal was born in Vienna, Austria in 1904. He studied architecture between 1922 and 1927 at the Technical University of Berlin earning a diploma under Hans Poelzig. Approximately two years after completing his degree he co-designed the iconic Kant garage, the first multi-storey garage in Berlin and one of the few existing examples of industrial Bauhaus architecture.

During the 1930s he turned to residential architecture, designing for, among others, Erich Maria Remarque (author of All Quiet on the Western Front, 1928) and Viennese author Arthur Schnitzler . He arrived in London in 1935 where he joined other Modernist architects at the MARS group, an influential think-tank founded by Morton Shand, Wells Coates, Maxwell Fry and F. R. S. Yorke. In 1938 he was commissioned to design the house at Maresfield Gardens.