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ARCHITECT; LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
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Born: 11/11/1913, Died: 4/11/2002 An architect known more for his landscape and planning work than for his buildings, Peter Shepheard was born in Liverpool and was educated at the Birkenhead School, a boy's academy on the Wirral peninsula to the west of the city. While at Birkenhead, Shepheard first developed a fascination with the forms and behavior of wildlife and the underlying orders in nature and plants. After graduating from Birkenhead, Shepheard studied at the University of Liverpool, completing a degree with First Class Honors in the School of Architecture in 1936, and studying with Professor Charles Reilly. His work in planning began early as he was associated with both the Greater London Plan (1943-44) and the Stevenage New Town (1944-47). By the 1950s Shepheard was associated with Derek Bridgwater, Gabriel Epstein and Peter Hunt in an office that emphasized a more humane approach to large-scale housing. Their New Street housing (1950-1953) presented a medium-rise development -- moving away from the less attractive aspects of highrise, high density housing developments. In England in the 1960s Shepheard's firms were also involved in the design of several academic institutions, inlding the production of a master plan for Lancaster University (1964-71) and a Student Union for the University of Liverpool (1962-65).From 1965 to 1966 Shepheard served as president of the Institute of Landscape Architects in England, and from 1969 to 1971 he was president of the Royal Institute of British Architect. In 1971 Shepheard came to the University of Pennsylvania as the Dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts; he would serve until 1979. During his tenure at Penn Shepheard spearheaded a move to renovate the campus, describing what he found there in 1971 as "tarnished" (see his "The Spaces in Between", linked below). In describing his proposals for the campus Shepheard declared: We believe that our proposals can transform the campus and make it one of the most civilized of the urban universities. There may be those who will argue against spending money on this transformation; to them we say this is simply arrears of money that should have been spent before. Seen as a proportion of the more that $200 million spent on the buildings of the sixties--which themselves caused most of the landscape problems we now aim to solve--it is a modest investment. Moreover, it will produce a relatively maintenance-free campus. The permanent plantings of trees, shrubs, ivy, and grass are designed to mature into a stable landscape whose maintenance calls for the occasional application of intelligence and understanding, rather than constant intensive laboring. The provision of a functional and beautiful path system, with paths where people want to walk, made of lasting materials, properly curbed and drained, will save a considerable sum in recurrent patching and mending of the present makeshift system.
Written by Emily T. Cooperman, and Sandra L. Tatman. Clubs and Membership Organizations
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