Alison and peter smithson biography examples

Alison and Peter Smithson were catapulted to premature architectural stardom on winning the competition to design Hunstanton Secondary Modern School in 1950. Peter was only 26 and Alison, his new wife and former student, a mere 21 years old. Having worked in the schools division of London County Council Architects’ Department for less than a year, winning the competition allowed them to set up their own practice.

Designed and built in deep austerity, Hunstanton School was a crafted building of assembled components, deliberately resisting the fashion for modular construction in favour of mimicking a Miesian aesthetic and pre-empting their ‘as found’ sensibility. The reason it took so long to complete was that despite its simplicity of construction and lack of finishes, the school used Norfolk County Council’s entire steel allocation until the end of steel rationing in May 1953.

Hunstanton was described by one teacher who spent 37 years there as ‘a tragedy’. He itemised its leaking roofs, cracking glass panels, extreme temperatures in summer and winter, horrendous sound transmission and other practical shortcomings. Even the famous wash-basin drain outlets hovering above the gulley had previously been done by Banister Fletcher at his Brentford Gillette Factory in 1936-37. But as a work of architecture, it was a rare glimmer of hope for architects wishing to reconstruct a post-war Britain in the modern idiom. It remains canonical to this day, largely thanks to Reyner Banham’s definitive 1966 book The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?

According to Banham, the Smithsons were, ‘the bell-wethers of the young throughout the middle Fifties’. They were the architectural equivalent of the ‘angry young men’ of the Kitchen Sink social realism art movement, determined to break down the barriers between high and low culture and to establish t

Alison Margaret Smithson (22 June 1928 – 14 August 1993) and Peter Denham Smithson (18 September 1923 – 3 March 2003) were English architects who together formed an architectural partnership, and are often associated with the New Brutalism (especially in architectural and urban theory).

Personal lives

Peter was born in Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham, north-east England, and Alison Margaret Gill was born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire. Peter served in the Madras Sappers and Miners in India and Burma, then returned to finish his architectural studies. They met while studying architecture at Durham University and married in 1949. They joined the architecture department of the London County Council as Temporary Technical Assistants before establishing their own partnership in 1950.

Of their three children, Simon, Samantha and Soraya, one, Simon, is likewise an architect.

Alison Smithson was also a novelist; her A Portrait of the Female Mind as a Young Girl was published in 1966.

Studies

Alison Smithson studied architecture at King's College, Newcastle (later the Newcastle University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), then part of the University of Durham, between 1944 and 1949. Peter Smithson studied architecture at the same university between 1939 and 1948, along with a programme in the Department of Town Planning, also at King's, between 1946 and 1948.

Work

The Smithsons first came to prominence wi

Wife and husband pair Alison (22 June 1928 – 16 August 1993) and Peter Smithson (18 September 1923 – 3 March 2003) formed a partnership that led British Brutalism through the latter half of the twentieth century. Beginning with a vocabulary of stripped-down modernism, the pair were among the first to question and challenge modernist approaches to design and urban planning. Instead, they helped evolve the style into what became Brutalism, becoming proponents of the "streets in the sky" approach to housing.

Born in Stockon-on-Tees, Peter began studying architecture in Newcastle, then part of Durham University, but was interrupted in his studies by the outbreak of the Second World War. Enlisting in the army and fighting as an engineer in India and Burma, he met Alison Gill upon his return to Durham University after the war ended. After the completion of Alison's own architecture degree, the pair married in 1949 and initially joined the architectural department of London County Council, then in charge of a wide range of powers including city planning and council housing.

The disruption of the war led to huge changes in society that gave the Smithsons their break. A new expansion of education following the passing of the 1944 Butler Education Act created an entirely new form of school; the Secondary Modern. The baby boom and this new schooling system required new, architecturally bold school buildings on a massive scale—winning the commission while still in their early twenties, the Smithsons were able to use the boost to set up their own practice. Hunstanton School, a starkly stripped-down formal building, immediately attracted attention from critics for its resolutely formal plan and for going against the prevailing method of easily replicated modular school buildings. The building was a nevertheless pragmatic and rela

English architects

Alison Margaret Smithson (22 June 1928 – 14 August 1993) and Peter Denham Smithson (18 September 1923 – 3 March 2003) were English architects who together formed an architectural partnership, and are often associated with the New Brutalism, especially in architectural and urban theory.

Education and personal lives

Peter was born in Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham, north-east England, and Alison Margaret Gill was born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire.

Alison studied architecture at King's College, Durham in Newcastle (later the Newcastle University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), then part of the University of Durham, between 1944 and 1949. Peter studied architecture at the same university between 1939 and 1948, along with a programme in the Department of Town Planning, also at King's, between 1946 and 1948. His studies were interrupted by war, and from 1942 he served in the Madras Sappers and Miners in India and Burma.

Peter and Alison had met at Durham, and they married in 1949. In the same year they both joined the architecture department of the London County Council as Temporary Technical Assistants before establishing their own partnership in 1950.

Of their three children, Simon, Samantha and Soraya, one, Simon, is an architect.

Alison Smithson published a novel A Portrait of the Female Mind as a Young Girl in 1966.

Work

The Smithsons first came to prominence with Hunstanton School, Norfolk complet