Roles
1953 – 1956 Member of Member Modern Architectural Research (MARS)
1960s First female Superintending Architect, the Scottish office
Education
1929 – 1934 Diploma in Architecture, Architectural Association
Main Projects
1938 “Shawms” house, Conduit head Road, Cambridge
1939 RIBA Industrial housing competition entry, with Erno Goldfinger and Mary Crawley.
1939 Building Centre: School and holiday camp competition with Erno Goldfinger and Mary Crawley.
1957 Leith Fort Housing, Leith, Edinburgh with Rachel Wilson and Albert Abbott, 21 storey point block, 7 storey access deck housing and courtyard housing. Won Civic Trust commendation 1966
1961 12 Lansdowne Road, Cambridge with David Croghan
Justin Blanco White
Architect (1911 - 2001)
“The rebuilding of cities, the demolition of slums, and a better life for all were goals of many young women architects in the 1930s. Coinciding with their experience and interests, modernism offered design opportunities in social architecture, while its association with social reform and its rejection of past styles easily conflated in the minds of left-wing architects who favoured a clean sweep politically and socially as well as aesthetically…. designs and projects for working class housing and other social architecture were made by Justin Blanco White, Mary Crowley, and Aileen Tatton Brown and women associated with the MARS Group and the Housing Centre.”
Women Architects in Britain, Lynne Walker
Born in 1911, Justin Blanco White trained at the Architectural Association where she graduated in 1934. She began her career designing early modern movement housing designs, predominantly in Cambridge and went on to work on pioneering design proposals for housing, educational and community buildings with Mary Crawley and Erno Goldfinger. By the end of the 1940s, Blanco White had taken a post with the Civil Service in Edinburgh where she played a significant role in the research, design and development of policy for statutory development plans for Scottish cities and boroughs during the 1950s. Blanco White wrote a number of influential articles and books in the fields of housing and education, her research in health becoming a definitive reference across the UK.
Justin Blanco White was awarded an OBE for her work as superintending architect of the Scottish Office.
download profile:
Justin Blanco White
further links:
Dictionary of Scottish Architects