F. R. S. Yorke

Francis Reginald Stevens Yorke (3 December 1906 – 10 June 1962), known professionally as F. R. S. Yorke[1] and informally as "Kay" or "K," was an English architect and author.

One of the first native British architects to design in a modernist style,[2] he made numerous contacts with leading European architects while contributing to Architects' Journal in the 1930s, and in 1933 was secretary and founder member of the MARS Group.[3] From 1935 until 1962 he was the editor of an annual publication Specification.[4] Between 1935 and 1937 he worked in partnership with the Hungarian architect and former Bauhaus teacher Marcel Breuer, before forming the Yorke Rosenberg Mardall partnership in 1944 together with Eugene Rosenberg (1907-1990) and Cyril Mardall (Sjöström) (1909-1994), with whom he designed many post-war buildings including Gatwick Airport.[5]

Yorke was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where his father was also an architect, and studied architecture and planning at the Birmingham School of Architecture, where his fellow students included other notable early modernist figures including Richard Sheppard, Frederick Gibberd, Colin Penn and Robert Furneaux Jordan.[5]

  1. ^ Worsley, Giles (10 May 2003). "Master builder: F R S Yorke". The Daily Telegraph. p. 10. Archived from the original on 5 May 2013. Retrieved 1 June 2008.
  2. ^ Pile, John F. (2005) [2000]. "The Spread of Early Modernism in Europe". A History of Interior Design (2nd ed.). London: Laurence King Publishing. p. 370. ISBN 1-85669-418-6.
  3. ^ Bullock, Nicholas (2002). "Rethinking the new architecture". Building the Post-war World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Britain. London: Routledge. p. 28. ISBN 0-415-22179-X.
  4. ^ Melvin, Jeremy (2003). FRS Yorke and the Evolution of English Modernism. Wiley-Academy. p. 131.
  5. ^ a b Sheppard, Richard; rev. Powers, Alan (2004). "Yorke, Francis Reginald Stevens (1906–1962)". In Powers, Alan (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37067. Retrieved 1 June 2008.