Graham Dawbarn


Graham Dawbarn CBE FRIBA FRAeS was a British architect most notable for designing the Television Centre, London, the redevelopment of Imperial College and an impressive variety of British interwar airport/aerodrome buildings.

Biography

Dawburn was born in London 8 September 1893, the son of R. A. Dawburn, a Civil Engineer. He was educated at The King's School, Canterbury and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, reading Maths Part 1 and then Architectural Studies in 1914. He served in the Royal Flying Corps and after the War he returned to Cambridge and assisted Professor E S Prior in the Architecture School. In 1920–21 he worked in the office of the Architect Arthur Keen and passed the war final RIBA examination in 1921.
He married Olive Topham in 1923 and they had two daughters

Professional career

In partnership with Sir Nigel Norman he designed airport buildings at Heston, Birmingham, Jersey, Guernsey, Manchester and Wolverhampton. After Norman's death in a flying accident during World War II, Dawbarn continued the practice on his own. The firm, Norman and Dawbarn, was purchased by Capita in 2005
In the late 1920s and early 1930s he collaborated with Alan Muntz in an airport consultancy firm called Norman, Muntz and Dawbarn, and with Norman he made a tour of airports around the world to make recommendations to RIBA on airport design.

Television Centre

The BBC commissioned him to design its new home for television. According to Louis Barfe:
In 2020 Television Centre was officially 60 years old and a was made by the Royal Television Society to celebrate, featuring Phillip Schofield

Imperial College

In 1956 Dawbarn was engaged to redevelop Imperial College, demolishing the late Victorian Imperial Institute in South Kensington. In response to public outcry in 1956 he said: "Change is usually sad, but it is dangerous to live too much in the past, and to overstate the past at the expense of the future." There was so much opposition to the original scheme that a new one was proposed in 1958 which kept the highly symbolic clock tower of the old Imperial Institute.

Airport buildings

Early in his career, after a study tour of American airports, Dawbarn designed various impressive airport/aerodrome buildings at Heston, Brooklands, Birmingham, Jersey, Guernsey, Manchester and Wolverhampton. He designed the blister hangar, a prefabricated aircraft hangar used during World War II.

Other buildings

Other notable buildings include: