Key Designers
Despite differences in scale and location, tracing the schemes back reveals a common pool of architects and landscape architects commissioned for the design of post-war social housing in the UK.
Modernist Landscapes
Modernist Architecture
Harvard
The Bauhaus
(November 18, 1889 – July 19, 1954) was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus Dessau from 1928 to 1930. In 1923 Meyer co-initiated the architectural magazine 'ABC Beiträge zum Bauen' (Contributions on Building) with Hans Schmidt.
Hannes Meyer
Director from 1928-1930
Graduated in 1938
Graduated in 1949
(29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) Edwin Lutyens was an English architect famous for his adaptations of traditional vernacular architecture. He designed many English country houses and war memorials
Edwin Lutyens
Founder of the Bauhaus. Director from 1919-1928
Director from 1930-1933
Dan Kiley
(2 September 1912 – 21 February 2004) was an American landscape architect, who worked in the style of modern architecture. The geometric layout of allees, bosques, water, paths, orchards, lawns, and other landscape features characterize Kiley's style. To him, regular geometry was at the heart of his design.
Ian McHarg
​
(20 November 1920 – 5 March 2001) was a Scottish landscape architect and writer on regional planning using natural systems. McHarg was one of the most influential persons in the environmental movement who brought environmental concerns into broad public awareness and ecological planning methods into the mainstream of landscape architecture, city planning and public policy.
(18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture.
Walter Gropius
Assissted McHarg with his teachings at Pennsylvania University between 1958-1959
​
Michael Brown
Was one of the most distinguished British landscape architects since the Second World War. He designed the landscape setting for many celebrated metropolitan public housing developments of the late Sixties and Seventies and his practice became the acknowledged leader in the field.
Inspired by European modernism on a sponsored trip to Europe
Basil Spence
13 August 1907 – 19 November 1976. was Spence was a Scottish architect, most notably associated with Coventry Cathedral in England
Le Corbusier
(6 October 1887 – 27 August 1965) Le Cobusier was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture.
Gropius leaves Germany with help of Fry in 1934. The pair work together at Isokon Group between 1934-1937
Lyons' worked with the pair at Isokon between 1936-37
(2 August 1899 – 3 September 1987), was an English modernist architect, writer and painter. Fry's writings include critical and descriptive books on town planning and architecture, notably his Art in a Machine Age.
Maxwell Fry
Spence spent a year in Lutyens office in 1929​
Similar concepts and approaches to landscaping
The pair worked together in 1953 when Townsend sets up Span. Span is Lyons' main client.
Mary Mitchell
(21 August 1923 – 1988) was a British landscape architect. n 1959-60 she was involved in planning the landscape of new land acquired by Birmingham University at the Vale in Edgbaston.
D.O.B
Firm(s)
Project(s)
George Trew Dunn
Charles Robertson
Peter Ferguson
George Trew Dunn
(30 April 1925 – 30 January 2020)
was an English sculptor, artist and designer. He is best known for his large scale concrete murals and public works of art from the 1960s and 1970s. His work is often of an abstract or stylized nature with its roots in the traditions of craft and "buildability".
William Mitchell
Geoffrey Darke
(1 September 1929-8 November 2011)
Geoffrey Darke, an architect, transformed the style of social housing. Darke constructed irregular terraces in homespun brick to break down the barriers between public and private dwellings, which were widely imitated throughout Britain
(11 January 1935 – 29 September 1991)
In 1961 Darbourne won a housing competition for his plans for the Lillington Gardens estate in Westminster, London, his later work including designing a stand for Chelsea Football Club at Stamford Bridge and the landscaping of Heathrow Airport.
John Darbourne
A.G
Sheppard Fiddler
(8 May 1909 – 1990) was a Welsh architect and town planner who was chief architect for the new town of Crawley from 1947 to 1952
Lillington Gardens
Architect
Architect
Project Architect
Project Architect
​
Landscpae Architect
Derek Crabtree