Modern Architect

The Life and Times of Robert Matthew
Miles Glendinning

September 2008
Code: 61865
ISBN: 9781859462836
592 pp
Hardback
£49.99

Buy now at RIBA Bookshops

This full-blooded biography of Sir Robert Matthew (1906–1975), one of the dominant figures in twentieth-century British architecture, interweaves his personal story with the turbulent political and social cross-currents of the welfare-state-era. A strong-willed, idealistic leader, Matthew exploited the great narratives of the day – public collectivism and private individualism, modernity and tradition – to help chart a wider strategy for architecture in Britain and abroad.

Always above all an ‘organisation architect’, Matthew’s prodigious work ethic and wide-ranging interests won him high-profile roles in local and national government, university education, international architectural politics, and socially-orientated private practice. The undisputed leader of post-war architecture in his native Scotland, Matthew was knighted in 1962, and became simultaneously President of the RIBA and the International Union of Architects, as well as founder-President of the Commonwealth Association of Architects.

Miles Glendinning’s Modern Architect: The Life and Times of Robert Matthew is a monumental achievement of historical scholarship that not only synthesises the disparate threads of Matthew’s own life but also sets out a comprehensively nuanced, balanced picture of the broad context of post-war modern architecture in Britain.