John F. C. Turner
Born
John Francis Charlewood Turner

(1927-07-09)9 July 1927
Kensington, London, England
Died3 September 2023(2023-09-03) (aged 96)
Hastings, England
Occupations
  • Architect
  • Academic
Spouses
Catherine Wilson
​
​
(m. 1950, divorced)​
Bertha Berry
​
(m. 1971)​
Relatives
Awards
Academic background
Education
Academic work
Institutions
Notable works
  • Housing By People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments (1976)

John Francis Charlewood Turner (9 July 1927 – 3 September 2023) was a British architect and theorist known for his work on informal self-help housing and neighbourhood building in Peru, the United States, and the United Kingdom.[1][2] His work on housing in the 1960s and 1970s has seen him described as the most influential post-war writer on housing in the developing world and as a "principal architect" in United Nations and World Bank policies on self-help urban assistance to developing countries.[3][4] He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1988 for "championing the rights of people to build, manage and sustain their own shelter and communities".

Early influences

Turner was born in Kensington, London, to Joscelyne Gaskin and Austin Charlewood Turner, and was raised in Kent.[5] His maternal grandparents were the artists Georgie and Arthur Gaskin.[6][7] Turner attended St Edmund's School in Surrey and Wellington College in Berkshire.[8][5] He enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (the AA) in London in 1944, but his studies were interrupted with two years of national service and a year working for BBPR in Milan, Italy. During national service he found a copy of the anarchist newspaper Freedom in his barracks and began reading anarchist literature including Peter Kropotkin and Herbert Read.[9][10][8] Following his return to studies he was influenced by the ideas of Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford through his lecturer Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, which he explored and published with fellow students Paffard Keatinge-Clay and Bruce Martin.[11][12][13] At this time he also contributed to Freedom on the encouragement of editor Colin Ward, drawing connections between Geddes and anarchism.[14][13] In later life Turner described himself as a "moderate anarchist", while he has cited the influence of Geddes on him throughout his career, including the use and adaptation of various Geddesian diagrams.[13] He has also cited William Morris as an early influence.[10] At this time he also collaborated with fellow students John Voelcker and Andrew Derbyshire. Turner graduated from the AA in 1954.

Peru

From 1957 to 1965 Turner worked in Peru as an architect in international and state housing agencies in Arequipa and then Lima. He was invited to work in Peru by the likeminded Peruvian architect and planner Eduardo Neira, Turner took up the offer in part because he saw little opportunity to put his ideas into practice within the UK.[15]

At the time there was significant migration within Peru from rural areas into the rapidly growing cities, contributing to significant housing shortages, overcrowding, and substandard housing. On the outskirts of cities informal squatter settlements, or barriadas, were forming as people claimed land and began constructing basic homes. Neira, as the head of the urban planning department of the Ministry of Development and Public Works, had been working on a change in policy for Arequipa to shift the role of the state to facilitating a number of barriadas by granting rights to settlers, providing basic services (water and sewerage), and providing some technical assistance in construction.[16]

While progress had been made in enacting Neira's recommendations, they faced significant local political disputes. In 1957 Turner was brought in to lead the Arequipa branch (the IUP, later OATA) of the Ministry responsible for the project. He worked to survey the settlements, negotiate with settlers, improve existing settlements, and develop a system of standardised construction components and methods for settlers to use.[17] He based the surveys on Geddes' own "civic surveys", while improvements made to existing settlements followed Geddes' "conservative surgery" model. However, Turner grew pessimistic about progress.

In January 1958 an earthquake hit Arequipa destroying 1,647 dwellings and killing 28 people. As part of the aid relief Turner was joined by his AA friend and fellow anarchist Patrick Crooke.[18][19]

In 1963 the Chilean-born architect and journal editor Monica Pidgeon invited Turner to edit an issue of Architectural Design on his and others work in Peru.[20]

United States

In 1965 Turner moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA where he began working as a research assistant at the Harvard–MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, and then as a lecturer at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning until 1973.[8][21][22] Much of his key academic writings date from this period.

In 1970–1971 Turner led an evaluation of self-help housing in the USA carried out by OSTI (Organization for Technical and Social Innovation) under Donald Schön, for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This work formed the basis of the 1972 book Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process which he co-edited with Robert Fichter.[8][5] In the preface Fichter describes the book as "part of a breaking wave of reaction against authoritarian solutions to technocratically posed problems".[23]

Britain

In 1973 he returned to London and began lecturing at the Architectural Association and then at the Development Planning Unit, University College London until 1983.[24] In 1976 his book Housing By People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments was published exploring alternate models of housing.[25]

In 1988 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "championing the rights of people to build, manage and sustain their own shelter and communities".[26][27][28] In 1992 he was awarded the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award.[29] Turner was awarded honorary doctorates from the National University of Engineering in Lima and the National University of the Center of Peru in Huancayo.[30]

John F. C. Turner died in Hastings, England on 3 September 2023, at the age of 96.[30][28] His archives are held by the Centre Obert d'Arquitectura in Barcelona.[31]

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ "John Turner". Spatial Agency. Archived from the original on 28 April 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  2. ^ "John TURNER". DPU Associates. Archived from the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  3. ^ Harris, Richard (2003). "A double irony: the originality and influence of John F.C. Turner". Habitat International. 27 (2): 245–269. doi:10.1016/S0197-3975(02)00048-6. Archived from the original on 26 April 2022. Retrieved 8 May 2022 – via ScienceDirect.
  4. ^ Ward, Peter M. (2012). "Self-Help Housing Ideas and Practice in the Americas". In Sanyal, Bishwapriya; Vale, Lawrence J.; Rosan, Christina D. (eds.). Planning Ideas That Matter: Livability, Territoriality, Governance, and Reflective Practice. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. p. 287. ISBN 978-0-262-30572-3. OCLC 801409179 – via ResearchGate.
  5. ^ a b c Payne, Geoffrey (26 September 2023). "John Turner obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
  6. ^ "Papers of the Gaskin family". Birmingham Archives and Heritage online catalogue. Archived from the original on 8 July 2022. Retrieved 9 May 2022.
  7. ^ Gyger, Helen (2019). Improvised Cities: Architecture, Urbanization & Innovation in Peru. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 96. doi:10.2307/j.ctvdjrpj7. ISBN 978-0-8229-8638-6. OCLC 1089833123. S2CID 134975573.
  8. ^ a b c d Turner, John F. C. (1977). Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 170. ISBN 0-394-40902-7. OCLC 2388108. Retrieved 8 May 2022 – via Internet Archive.
  9. ^ Gyger, Helen Elizabeth (2013). The Informal as a Project: Self-Help Housing in Peru, 1954–1986 (PDF) (PhD thesis). Columbia University. Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 May 2022. Retrieved 8 May 2022.
  10. ^ a b Gyger 2019, p. 96.
  11. ^ "John Turner - publications". DPU Associates. Archived from the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  12. ^ Turner, John F.C.; Keatinge-Clay, Paffard; Martin, Bruce (1949). "Appendix I. Part 2. The Geddes Diagrams: Their Contribution Towards a Synthetic Form of Thought". In Tyrwhitt, Jaqueline (ed.). Cities in Evolution. By Geddes, Patrick (1915). London: Williams and Norgate. pp. 200–205 – via Internet Archive.
  13. ^ a b c Peirson, Ellen (11 January 2021). "John FC Turner (1927- )". Architectural Review. Archived from the original on 4 November 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  14. ^ Turner, John (10 January 1948). "The Work of Patrick Geddes" (PDF). Freedom. London. p. 2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 September 2021. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
  15. ^ Gyger 2019, p. 100.
  16. ^ Gyger 2019, p. 102.
  17. ^ Gyger 2019, p. 108.
  18. ^ Mardell, Joshua (15 January 2019). "Patrick Crooke 1927-2018". The RIBA Journal. Archived from the original on 24 July 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  19. ^ Mardell, Joshua (18 August 2019). "'On how we ought to be anarchists': Pat Crooke, John Turner, and dweller-oriented architecture". The Journal of Architecture. 24 (6): 829–852. doi:10.1080/13602365.2019.1686409. ISSN 1360-2365. S2CID 214500728. Archived from the original on 8 May 2022. Retrieved 8 May 2022 – via Academia.edu.
  20. ^ Gyger 2019, p. 95.
  21. ^ "From the John FC Turner Archive". communityplanning.net. Archived from the original on 27 October 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  22. ^ Gyger 2019, pp. 139, 317.
  23. ^ Turner, John F. C.; Fichter, Robert, eds. (1972). Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp. viii. ISBN 0-02-089690-5. OCLC 760537275. Archived from the original on 8 July 2022. Retrieved 8 May 2022 – via Internet Archive.((cite book)): CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  24. ^ Gyger 2019, p. 317.
  25. ^ Turner, John F. C. (1976). Housing By People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. London: Marion Boyars. ISBN 0-7145-2568-5. OCLC 2394859 – via Internet Archive.
  26. ^ Cohen, Michael (2015). "John F.C. Turner and Housing as a Verb". Built Environment. 41 (3): 412–418. doi:10.2148/benv.41.3.412. ISSN 0263-7960. JSTOR 44131925. Archived from the original on 8 May 2022. Retrieved 8 May 2022 – via JSTOR.
  27. ^ Hall, Peter (2014). Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880 (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 301–308. ISBN 978-1-118-45651-4. OCLC 865074335 – via Internet Archive.
  28. ^ a b "John F. Charlewood Turner". Right Livelihood. Archived from the original on 27 October 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  29. ^ "UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award". UN-Habitat. Archived from the original on 4 June 2023. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  30. ^ a b Golda-Pongratz, Kathrin; Luis Oyón, José; Zimmermann, Volker (12 September 2023). "Muere el arquitecto John F. C. Turner a los 96 años". El País (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 13 September 2023. Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  31. ^ "Donation of the British architect John F. C. Turner's library and archive". Centre Obert d'Arquitectura. 31 October 2022. Archived from the original on 19 September 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2023.

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