My father, John Warren, who has died aged 86, was an architect, planner, architectural historian and artist. He relished the challenge of bringing both a practical architect’s eye to understanding and decoding important buildings, and a historical literacy to their conservation.
Although he worked on new designs for everything from housing schemes and offices to schools and churches, he also maintained research interests in architectural history, and this blend of skills led to major conservation projects including West Dean College, West Sussex; St Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill, in west London; and the Naval and Military Club in central London. In the Middle East he carried out extensive building conservation in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
He fought the destruction of historic buildings in the wholesale redevelopments that were common in Britain in the 1960s and 70s, and was responsible for saving many of them. He was involved in the creation of the Weald & Downland Living Museum of historic buildings and the Amberley Museum of industrial history in West Sussex, and carried out building conversions for the Landmark Trust.
John was born in London to Jessie (nee Parker), a commercial artist, and Cecil, who worked in insurance. In 1940 the family moved to Sussex, where he attended Collyer’s school, in Horsham, going on to study architecture at King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne, then part of Durham University, now Newcastle University.
There he met Judith Kershaw, and they married in 1957. After graduating John worked on government projects in Pakistan before winning a Rose Shipman award from the Royal Institute of British Architects that allowed him and Judith to spend eight months in Turkey and Greece studying Ottoman architecture.
In 1964 he co-founded the Architectural and Planning Partnership in Horsham, which by the 80s employed 120 people, with offices in Brighton, London, Edinburgh, Bombay and Baghdad.
Moving to Wensleydale, Yorkshire, in 1998, he continued to work as an architect and to lecture, write and paint, having an associate position at York University. He wrote and contributed to a number of books and papers on architectural conservation and held various advisory appointments including being a Unesco world heritage site inspector.
His interests included industrial history, growing fruit and the contemplative purposefulness of the Quakers. A skilled artist, he had work displayed at several Royal Academy summer exhibitions.
He is survived by Judith, his children, Rebecca and me, and his grandchildren, Kit, Matthew, Francis and Alex.
