Sir Raymond Unwin
b. Rotherham, Yorks., 1863;
d. Connecticut, USA, 1940.

Sir Raymond Unwin, a famous British architect and town planner who put his social-welfare beliefs into practice by designing, with his partner Barry Parker, decent small dwellings and putting his mind to the perennial problems of town planning. Educated at Oxford, Unwin went on to study engineering and architecture, becoming acquainted early on with William Morris and his work. The first dwellings by Unwin and Parker (his partner from 1896) are direct descendants of the Arts & Crafts tradition; their schemes for New Earswick (for Rowntree) and Letchworth Garden City betray similar roots while formalizing the “garden-suburb” principles. From 1907 Unwin and Parker largely followed their own careers, Unwin’s interests in town planning reflected in his influential book Town Planning in Practice. As well as lecturing, Sir Raymond Unwin worked for various government departments and was President of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (1928-31) and the RIBA (1931-3). Sir Raymond Unwin was knighted in 1932.

List of major buildings / works:
St Andrew’s Church, Barrow Hill, Derbyshire (largely alone), 1893.
With Parker: C. F. Goodfellow House, Northwood, Staffs., 1899-1902.
Co-op housing, St Botolph’s Avenue, Sevenoaks, Kent, 1903-6.
New Earswick, York, from 1901.
Letchworth Garden City, Herts., from 1903.
Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, 1906-7.

Bibliography
IT Raymond Unwin, Cottage Plans and Common Sense, London, 1902
Town Planning in Practice, London, 1909
William Ashworth, The Genesis of Modern British Town Planning, London, 1954
Walter Creese, The Search for Environment, New Haven, Conn., 1966
The Legacy of Raymond Unwin, Cambridge, 1967
Mark Swenarton, Homes for Heroes, London, 1981