Frank Mears

Sir Frank Charles Mears PPRSA FRSE LLD (11 July 1880 – 25 January 1953) was an architect and Scotland's leading planning consultant from the 1930s to the early 1950s.

Born in Tynemouth he moved to Edinburgh around 1890 when his father, Dr William Pope Mears, was appointed to a lecturing post in the Anatomy Department of Edinburgh University.

He trained as an architect, initially under Hippolyte Blanc (1896-1901), and then, in 1903, under Robert Weir Schultz (1860-1951). In 1906, after tours of England and the Continent, he returned to Scotland and worked under Ramsay Traquair (1874-1952). In 1908 he became an assistant to the pioneer planner Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), working on the Civic Survey of Edinburgh for the first ever Town Planning Exhibition (1910).

He worked with Geddes and his daughter Norah on the creation of A Scottish National Zoological Garden 1913-14 which became Edinburgh Zoo. In 1915 he married Norah Geddes, making Patrick Geddes his father-in-law.

In World War I he served with Geddes' son Alasdair in the Kite Balloon section of the Royal Flying Corps and, importantly, invented the modern parachute (and quick release buckle) whilst serving as a Major in this role.

In 1919, Patrick Geddes was engaged by the Zionist Organisation to prepare a scheme for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Frank Mears worked as his assistant, translating his ideas into plans and architectural drawings. Between 1925 and 1929, Mears worked with the Jerusalem-based architect, Benjamin Chaikin, on designs for specific university buildings, including the Einstein Institutes of Mathematics and Physics and the David Wolffsohn Library.

Before the war, Mears had assisted Geddes with the mounting of the Cities and Town Planning Exhibition in Dublin and he subsequently worked with Dublin Corporation and the Irish Local Government Board on a number of schemes for garden villages in various parts of the city. Between 1922 and 1924, in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War, he prepared plans for civic renewal and the accommodation of new national institutions on behalf of the Greater Dublin Reconstruction Movement.

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