English architect Peter Smithson died March 3th at the age of 79. He had a practice together with is wife Alison. Among the buildings they designed are the Hunstanton secondary school and the Economist offices in London near St. Jamesstreet.
For an obituary see the link to the English newspaper The Guardian.
To illustrate the Smithsons disapproval for modern urban design a quote from Peter Smithson after he visited in 1954 the new suburbs of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
'It is nothing more or less than a great filing system for men, based on the assumption that shelter and food alone have to be provided. [ ] People have descriped to me how Van Eesteren thinks of the city as a living Schwitters, a great developing mutating organism. Unfortunaly the bus tickets in this case happen to be three storey flat blocks; a pattern which seems incapable of providing any sort of framework for live.'