Stephen Gardiner

Stephen Gardiner (25 April 1924 – 15 February 2007) was a British architect, teacher and writer. Gardiner was born and raised in Chelsea in London. He was the younger son of Clive Gardiner, painter and principal of Goldsmiths College from 1929 to 1958, and Lilian Lancaster, also a painter and one of Walter Sickert's favourite pupils at the Slade. His paternal grandfather was the journalist A. G. Gardiner. His elder brother, Patrick Gardiner, became a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. He was educated at Dulwich College, and served in the Royal Navy from 1942. He studied at the Architectural Association and qualified as an architect in 1948. He then worked for Wells Coates, then for short periods with Richard Blow and Peter Dickinson, and with Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. He worked with Richard Sheppard from 1951 to 1957, working mainly on schools. He founded his own practice in 1957, and was in partnership with Christopher Knight in the 1960s. Perhaps his crowning achievement was designing a new house at Stratton Park in Hampshire for Sir John Baring, replacing a late 18th-century house by George Dance with a modern building largely in brick with a steel conservatory. The original building was demolished, but the Tuscan portico was left standing as an architectural feature in front of the house. He also worked on many school buildings in and around London. He became a business partner of Joan Scotson in 1970, who later became his wife. He received the OBE in 2002 for his contribution to community architecture.