Gordon Cullen

Thomas Gordon Cullen (9 August 1914 - 11 August 1994) was an influential English architect and urban designer who was a key motivator in the Townscape movement. He is best known for the book Townscape, first published in 1961. Later editions of Townscape were published under the title The Concise Townscape.

Cullen was born in Calverley, Pudsey, near Leeds. He studied architecture at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, the present day University of Westminster, and subsequently worked as a draughtsman in various architects' offices including that of Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton, but he never qualified or practised as an architect.

Between 1944 and 1946 he worked in the planning office of the Development and Welfare Department in Barbados, as his poor eyesight meant that he was unfit to serve in the British armed forces. He later returned to London and joined the Architectural Review journal, first as a draughtsman and then as a writer on planning policies. There he produced a large number of influential editorials and case studies on the theory of planning and the design of towns. Many improvements in the urban and rural environment in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. He was also involved in the Festival of Britain in 1951. One of the few large scale Cullen works on public display is the mural in the foyer of the Erno Goldfinger designed Greenside Primary School in west London, completed in 1953. His 1958 ceramic mural in Coventry, depicting the history of the City and its post-war regeneration, is on a much grander scale though now relocated away from its original central location.

His techniques consisted largely of sketchy drawings that conveyed a particularly clear understanding of his ideas, and these had a considerable influence on subsequent architectural illustration styles. He also illustrated several books by other various authors, before writing his own book - based on the idea of Townscape - in 1961. The Concise Townscape has subsequently been republished around 15 times, proving to be one of the most popular books on Urban Design in the 20th Century.

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