Peter Barber is the founder of Peter Barber Architects, an award-winning practice based in London, U.K., known for its radical approach to social housing and urban planning. Driven by a consistent commitment to radical solutions and excellence in design, Barber and his colleagues have created groundbreaking mixed-use and residential schemes as well as many award-winning buildings, projects, and planning studies. In 2022, Barber received the Soane Medal, which recognizes architects, educators, and critics who have enriched the public understanding of architecture. He and his firm also have won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Neave Brown Award for Housing and the Royal Academy’s Grand Prize for Housing. Barber was also awarded an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) for his services to architecture and a lifetime achievement award from The Architect’s Journal and serves as an elected member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Delivering Harvard GSD’s John T. Dunlop Lecture, Barber will highlight some of his firm’s social housing projects, such as Donnybrook Quarter, a 40-unit, low-rise, high-density, mixed-use project near Victoria Park in London; and Edgewood Mews, a 97-unit urban block arranged around a pedestrianized street near North Circular Road in London’s Barnet borough. He will review the political and ideological contexts in which these and other projects were conceived and describe his firm’s analog design process, which makes extensive use of hand sketches and hand-made models.
