User:ArchhistD/sandbox

Ann McEwen
Ann McEwen (nee Radford) (1918-2008) was an architect, town-planner and planning consultant. She trained at the Architectural Association, and worked in Hemel Hempstead, for the London County Council and later in Edinburgh, before becoming a campaigner for green issues towards the end of her life.

Early Life & Training
McEwen was born in south London. Her mother was a doctor working in public health, her father also a doctor and Medical Officer of Health in St Pancras, London. She attended Howell's School in Denbigh, North Wales. Between 1936 and 1940 McEwen attended the Architectural Association School in London. She was part of a cohort of students who campaigned for the modernisation of the school's curriculum, including Anthony Cox, Richard Llewellyn Davies, Elizabeth Chesterton and Leo de Syllas, so that they could be better equipped to train for the major projects the modern world demanded. She formed one of the team who created a group project as their thesis in 1938: 'Tomorrow Town'. This was a hypothetical new town for Faringdon, Berkshire, and included a mixed development housing scheme. In December 1940, she married John Wheeler, one of the Tomorrow Town team, they had two children. He was killed in September 1945.

Career
=== In the early 1940s, McEwen worked on neighbourhood planning with the architect-planner Judith Ledeboer. Between 1946-47, she took on a similar role with Geoffrey Jellicoe, assisting on the master plan for the New Town at Hemel Hempstead. In 1947 she married the journalist Malcolm McEwen. While pregnant with their child she took the the Diploma in Town Planning at the School of Planning and Regional Reconstruction (having persuaded its head, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt that this was possible). In 1949 she joined the London County Council (LCC) as part of Percy Johnson Marshall’s team. She worked under the Head of Planning Arthur Ling on the reconstruction of Stepney and Poplar. ===

McEwen stayed at the LCC until 1961. She then moved to become one of the members of the team Colin Buchanan had assembled to write the Traffic in Towns report, published in 1963 for the Ministry of Transport. The following year she joined him as a member of the Consultancy practice he had founded. Working there until 1973 she produced planning and transport studies of Bath, Edinburgh, Canterbury as well as Bergamo, Italy, succeeding in Edinburgh in getting plans to build a motorway-scale bridge between Old and New Town abandoned. From the LCC MacEwen went to the Ministry of Transport in 1961, to form part of the team working under Colin Buchanan on what became the Traffic in Towns report (1963). The Report was significant for forming part of a nascent movement against the unquestioned dominance of the motor car and the power of the traffic engineer in post-war planning. The team sought to balance the demands of traffic and commerce with existing historic urban infrastructure and while it retained a fondness for comprehensive redevelopment, its stress on managing the impact of the car, advocacy of public transport, stress on the maintenance of environmental standards, and the safety and well-being of pedestrians, represented an important challenge to the contemporary orthodoxy. MacEwen became a partner in Colin Buchanan and partners from 1964 to 1973, where she produced planning and transport studies of Bath, Edinburgh, Canterbury as well as Bergamo, Italy, succeeding in Edinburgh in getting plans to build a motorway-scale bridge between Old and New Town abandoned. She also pursued an academic career as a researcher in the Transport Section, Department of Civil Engineering, Imperial College London (1963-63) and later as Senior Lecturer at the School of Advanced Studies at Bristol University (1974-77)

Later Life
From the mid-1970s onwards, McEwen worked closely with her husband in advocating for national parks and what would now be called sustainable development. They were honorary Research Fellows at University College London, and produced two books: Their two books National Parks: conservation or cosmetics? (1982) and Greenprints for the Countryside (1987). She died in 2008.