1923 - 2015

Twenty-three years after the death of his mediatic partner James Stirling, the Scottish architect James Gowan passed away on 15 June in London. Born in Glasgow in 1923, his architecture studies – at the Glasgow School of Art and the Kingston School of Architecture – were interrupted by World War II. After working with Philip Powell, he teamed up with the famed Scottish architect in 1956. With Stirling he completed numerous works, but among them one of the most distinctive is the Engineering Building at Leicester University. Though their office earned much popular recognition, the partnership with Stirling would end in 1963. From then on he designed works on his own, like the Schreiber House in West Hampstead or the Istituto Clinico Humanitas near Milan. Though he never stopped designing after splitting up with Stirling, his most important contribution of this later period would be in the academic field, becoming an influential figure at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, teaching students like Richard Rogers, Peter Cook, and Quinlan Terry, among others.