The AA is saddened to learn of the death of Penelope Whiting (AADipl 1942, ARIBA) who passed away on 28 February 2017. Here she is remembered by her niece, Nicolette Baines RIBA.

Penelope Whiting died on the last day of February 2017 at the age of 99, still splendidly decisive and characterful until the very last few days.

Penelope qualified during the war, while driving ambulances and volunteering for fire-watch duties in the evenings. She was modest about these challenges, but gave lucid clues about the difficulties of emergency driving in the blitz with headlights masked except for a central round opening an inch in diameter. She was one of a very small number of women architects at a time when there could still be some active discouragement of women taking up professional work.

Nevertheless, Penelope joined the innovative practice of Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall (YRM), working with FRS ‘K’ Yorke (an influential member of the MARS group) initially on new housing. On behalf of the Ministry of Works she designed prefabricated housing to meet the immediate housing shortage; many of these homes lasted long after the end of their design life, and a few are still in use today.

The practice was deeply involved in the post-war New Town developments; Penelope designed the Mark Hall and Ladyshott estates at Harlow. She would talk about the effects of uprooting people from their existing communities to the New Towns, and identified with young mothers not able to pop next door and ask their mother’s advice. But in those days there was a real and widespread belief that we could build good housing that would genuinely make people’s lives better; and, with her books and conversation, she was part of the culture which inspired a new generation to take up the challenge. It was a world away from the apparent paralysis and changed priorities which affect the housing problem today.

There was fun as well as serious effort in the work; K Yorke had many contacts and friends among the artists of the time, and YRM were able to commission Henry Moore to create his ‘Family Group’ for Stevenage New Town. When it came to the very exciting project of a new airport at Gatwick, Penelope was the architect who designed the passenger bridge linking the existing station to the new airport building. She was part of the discussion on the curtain walling, for which Peggy Angus made marbled clear glass in images like reflected clouds.

In 1953 Penelope began a further initiative in writing books on architecture, at first with Yorke who had already published several books. Together these publications, published by the Architectural Press, form a key part of the architectural literature on houses of this important post-war period. In 1953 they jointly published ‘The New Small House’ - a ‘picture book to be browsed through’ in Yorke’s words – which as a result reached a wide public. However, as in the other books which followed, it was much more than that with plans, costs, and heating solutions as well as discussions on materials shortages and space standards. Penelope later gave further emphasis to the client’s relationship with the architect.

There was further collaboration on the Editorship of ‘Specification’, then a technical bible in architectural practice. Penelope wrote the Floor Finishes section and her engineer husband, Trevor Hawkes, contributed a section on Contractors’ Equipment. Later editions of Specification were co-edited with Dex Harrison. She also wrote a technical book on Floor Finishes.

After Yorke’s death in 1962 Penelope left YRM and set up her own practice in West London, working principally on developing Southlands Training College in Wimbledon. The complex has mainly been modified into flats after the teacher training college became part of Roehampton University, but at the time Penelope and her assistants Peter Leitner and Alan Gibbs created a fine library, blocks of teaching rooms of a very civilised and welcoming ambience, and a staff house complete with its own bridge which was a delight to see. She used to say that site visits were her favourite part of the job – and it was clear there was there was much mutual respect in the builder/ architect relationship.

During this time Penelope published two further influential books; New Houses in 1964 and New Single-Storey Houses in 1966. Unlike ‘The New Small House’, which had included international examples and two Thames barge conversions, these two focussed entirely on a variety of modern English houses, which were generally quite economical examples, to which people could relate.

Trevor died suddenly in 1983, at a young age, and Penelope retired from practice in that year, moving from London to the Forest of Dean, and finally to the lovely town of Newnham-on-Severn, in which she found constant interest and enjoyment. Partly in this context, she continued to say that she never stopped being glad (‘every day’!) that she was an architect.

Penelope married Trevor Hawkes A.C.G.I., M.I. Mech. E. in 1946 and leaves two children, six grand-children and four great-grandchildren.