Obituary: Professor Robert Gardner-Medwin

Robert Gardner-Medwin, architect and town planner: born 10 March 1907; Adviser in Town Planning and Housing to Comptroller of Development and Welfare in the British West Indies 1944-47; Chief Architect and Planning Officer to Department of Health for Scotland 1947-52; Roscoe Professor of Architecture, Liverpool University 1952-73 (Emeritus); married 1935 Margaret Kilgour (four sons); died 29 June 1995.

Robert Gardner-Medwin was the fourth Roscoe Professor of Architecture at Liverpool University; he held the Chair from 1952 to 1973, years of considerable expansion in the history of the university and of wide-ranging change in architectural education.

Born in North Wales, Robert was educated at Rossall School. He graduated with First Class honours in Architecture from Liverpool University in 1931, the same year in which he was a Prix de Rome finalist. He held a Commonwealth Fellowship in City and Regional Planning at Harvard and took his Diploma in Civic Design at Liverpool in 1935.

Until he was called up for military service in 1940, Gardner-Medwin was in private practice and taught briefly at the Architectural Association in London and Regent Street Polytechnic. His war service was with the Royal Engineers at Southern Command Headquarters constructing American base camps and hospital units.

In 1944 he was appointed Town Planning and Housing Advisor to the Comptroller for Development and Welfare in the British West Indies. This was pioneering work, establishing a framework for development, making development plans and providing generic building plan types. The work involved a new plan for the centre of Georgetown, British Guiana, which had been destroyed by fire in 1945.

In 1947 Gardner-Medwin became Chief Architect and Planning Officer to the Department of Health for Scotland where he headed a team of 35 architects with responsibility for advice on housing, hospitals, schools and prisons. His office undertook a considerable amount of research, and advised local authorities, as well as giving planning advice to the Secretary of State on regional policy and the siting and planning of new towns.

In 1952 he took over the Liverpool School of Architecture from Lionel Budden who had taught him as a student. In his inaugural lecture Gardner- Medwin described how he saw the architect as a team player and a leader in an increasingly large-scale organisation more like, as he put it, a conductor of an orchestra than the leader of a quartet, which in his view had been the situation before the war. He himself built less now although he encouraged good design wherever he could and was influential in establishing the Department of Building Engineering which fitted very well into his perception of the developing building team. The school adapted to the changes in architectural education during the 1960s and under his guidance began to undertake some important research work, particularly in housing and architectural history. The school's design tradition flourished and Liverpool graduates spread out world-wide following their Professor, who was himself an indefatigable traveller and for a time Chairman of the RIBA Overseas Relations Committee. He had a commanding presence, tall and with a striking profile, in every sense one of the patrician professors of his day.

Gardner-Medwin retired in the summer of 1973, earlier than he need have done, but by that time he was suffering acutely from arthritis. Following two hip operations he gradually returned to full health and resumed his interest in architecture and conservation. He served for many years on the Liverpool Heritage Bureau, the committee of the Victorian Society and various other conservation bodies in Liverpool and on the Wirral, where he continued to live with his wife Margaret in the beautiful house they had designed and built on the slopes of Caldy Hill.

His interest in architecture, in Liverpool and in the school continued unabated right until the end. He was a regular visitor to the school, and he played an active part this year in the preparations for the centenary of the School of Architecture. He was present at the centenary events and was made the first President of the newly established Liverpool School of Architecture Society. He had a great enthusiasm for good design, a concern for conservation and a great sense of probity and professionalism which enthused all he said and did.