Royal Corinthian Yacht Club, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex

The building is a three-storey steel framed structure resting on a concrete slab supported on concrete piles. With its flat roof, horizontal fenestration, white render and concrete piloti, it obviously appealed to Johnson and Hitchcock who were touring Europe at the time, seeking examples of architecture that conformed to their fairly arbitrary notion of what constituted the International Style. Johnson saw photographs of the yacht club and was almost convinced. "There are some things which do not please me completely", he told Emberton. In particular he disliked the "Victorian detail" of the staircase and the diagonal arrangement of the windows in the end wall which contradicted the 'rule' that windows were horizontal in the International Style. "The slanted rows of windows in the stair wall does not compose well, arranged as you have them", Emberton was informed. He replied to the criticism noting that "construction has determined their form". Johnson however remained unconvinced and the photograph which appeared in the 'International Style' was that of the riverside elevation, complete with its horizontal windows and piloti.

The commission for the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club was a direct result of his commercial work. The Commodore of the Club at the time was Philip Benson, an advertising man who knew Emberton through the Advertising Association. Benson wanted to replace the old timber club house with a new larger building, a "ferro-concrete structure of advanced design".

In 1932, an exhibition was organised by Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock at the Museum of Modern Art in New York entitled "International Style". In the book of the same title which accompanied the show, the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club by Joseph Emberton was illustrated along with works by Alvar Aalto while other major European figures like Bruno Taut and Hannes Meyer were completely ignored.