Percy Johnson-Marshall

Percy Edwin Alan Johnson-Marshall CMG (20 January 1915 – 14 July 1993) was a British urban designer, regional planner and academic. Born in India, he was educated at Liverpool University, and worked initially with local authorities in the south of England. In 1959 he took a post as senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and was appointed Professor of Urban Design and Regional Planning in 1964.

In 1962 he founded the planning consultancy Percy Johnson-Marshall & Associates, which was commissioned to masterplan the University of Edinburgh's Comprehensive Development Area in the 1960s. The practice was involved in urban planning and redevelopment in the UK and abroad. He is well known for being the main Architect of Celtic Park.

Johnson-Marshall was born in Ajmer, India, to English parents, and was raised in England from the 1920s. He attended the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool, where his older brother, Stirrat Johnson-Marshall, was already studying. Tutors at Liverpool included Sir Patrick Abercrombie and Sir Charles Herbert Reilly. After graduating in 1936 he worked for Middlesex County Council, then for Willesden Borough Council, before moving to Coventry City Council in 1938, where he worked as Senior Assistant Architect under Chief Architect Donald Gibson, until called up for war service in 1941. He was elected to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 1938.

During the Second World War he served with the Royal Engineers in India and Burma, attaining the rank of Major. Post-war, he remained in Burma for a year, advising the Burmese Government on planning and reconstruction, and preparing a reconstruction plan for the country, in collaboration with William Tatton-Brown. After his return to the UK, he was employed as an Assistant Regional Planning Officer at the new Ministry of Town and Country Planning, during which time the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, the first planning law in the UK, was drawn up. In 1947 he was elected member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), also serving as a member of council and of the Education Committee. In 1948 he gained a Diploma in Town Planning from the School of Planning and Research for Regional Development (SPRRD), London, where he later worked as a part-time teacher. Johnson-Marshall worked as a Senior Planner with London County Council from 1949 to 1959, overseeing several Comprehensive Development Areas, including Lansbury Estate.

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