Dame Name Meaning

Dame Drew

was an English Modernist architect and town planner. She qualified at the AA School in London, and prior to World War II became one of the leading exponents of the Modern Movement in London.At the time she had her first office, with the idea of employing only female architects, architecture was a male dominated profession. She was a principled, independent and vigorous woman with the vision that architecture had to provide what was needed to improve the quality of life, and she was active in places and at times that needed this: in designing social and public housing in England and abroad, and after World War II which brought with it the need for new design. With her second husband Maxwell Fry she worked in West Africa designing schools and universities, and with Fry and Pierre Jeanneret, on the housing at Chandigarh, the new Capital of the Punjab. She designed buildings in Ghana, Nigeria, Iran and Sri Lanka, and she wrote books on what she had learnt about architecture there. In London she did social housing, buildings for the Festival of Britain, and helped to establish the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Everywhere she went she made friends and influenced all sorts of people who would remember her as much for her spontaneous kindness and interest as for her architecture. After retiring from practice she travelled and lectured abroad, receiving several honorary degrees. She received her DBE in 1996.