Roles
1949 Core member of the Architect and Builders Branch of the Ministry of Education
1949 Developed the founding space standard for school buildings: Building Bulletins
Education
1930 Diploma in Architecture, Architectural Association
Main Projects
1930 – 1931 Sewell’s Orchard, Tewin, Hertfordshire
1948 Burleigh School, Chetsnut, Hertfordshire
1949 Little Green School, Corxley Green, Herts
1951 – 1953 St Crispin's secondary modern, Wokingham, Berkshire.
1952 Woodside junior school, Amersham, Buckinghamshire
1959 Finmere school, Oxfordshire
1967 Eveline Lowe school, Camberwell, south London
1968 – 1969 Delf Hill middle school, Bradford 1969 Bishop Grosseteste Teacher Training College, Lincoln
Mary Medd
Architect (1907 – 2005)
“Architectural radical at the forefront of Britain's postwar school building programme.”
Lynne Walker and Andrew Saint
The Guardian, 24 June 2023
Mary Beaumont Medd began architectural practice at the height of the depression and was introduced by housing consultant Elizabeth Denby to a user-centred approach to design and the advanced ideas coming out of Europe. Working primarily in education, Mary Medd made contacts with the best teachers, learned what they were trying to do and watched children in and out of classes. As a result her primary school projects benefited from this direct and systematic observation of habits and needs when designing schools. With her husband David Medd she was a leading public-sector architect whose record of progressive school building for Hertfordshire county council and the Ministry of Education attracted renown in the postwar decades.
download profile:
Mary Medd
further links:
Ace Foundation
Architects and Building Branch photographic Archive
Institute of Education, University of London
Institute of Education, University of London; Papers of David and Mary Medd
Mary Medd, The Guardian