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Denis Lucian Clarke Hall FRIBA (4 July 1910 - 31 July 2006) was an English architect in London, England who pioneered new standards in post-war school design. He served as President of the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) 1958-59 and Chairman of the Architects' Registration Council of the United Kingdom between 1963-64.

Life
Born in Essex in 1910, Denis Clarke Hall grew up on a smallholding near Hornchurch. He was the son of Sir William Clarke Hall and Edna Clarke Hall (née Waugh). His father was a magistrate who with the barrister Benjamin Waugh founded the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Clarke Hall's mother, was an artist and a friend of Augustus John, often taking her two sons, Justin and Denis, as her subjects.

He married Fiona Garfitt in 1936 with whom he had a son and two daughters.

Education
He was educated at Bedales School and King's College London (only to find the course disappointing and to leave after a year). His father sent him to the newly opened National Institute of Industrial Psychology, which recommended architecture as appropriate to his mix of scientific and woodworking skills. So in 1930 he began his architectural studies at the Architectural Association, which was to become the most progressive architecture school in Britain by 1940, but which in 1930 was still largely traditional. His final-year dissertation at the AA was on the uses and applications of concrete, when he was advised by the engineer Ove Arup, then a studio tutor.

Career
On leaving the AA in 1936, he went to work for Clive Entwistle, who introduced him to the Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS) - the vanguard of British modernism. He also met Walter Gropius, without realising the importance of the Bauhaus.

In 1937, having just qualified as an architect, he won a competition sponsored by the progressive News Chronicle for an ideal secondary school. This was well in advance of the reforms in the 1940s that made secondary education universal. For his competition submission he spent a six weeks researching classroom design, including angles of view, lighting and heating, with One Arup advising him on the structure. The News Chronicle design was entirely drawn from first principles and the competition win secured Clarke Hall's career as a specialist schools architect.

He was commissioned by the Education Officer for the North Riding of Yorkshire to realise a version of his design as the Richmond Girls' High School, now the sixth form centre of Richmond School. It was a rare example of the 1930s Modern Movement in northern England. The design combined load-bearing walls of local stone with concrete construction, realising a synthesis of modern and traditional elements that marked a progression for British architecture frustrated by the war. The school was completed in 1940, its windows arriving miraculously from Switzerland and with stacking furniture designed by Alvar Aalto.

The design of Richmond school was revolutionary at the time. Each pair of classrooms is a pavilion set off the main circulation spine to create an enclosed courtyard. Large south-facing windows could be folded away, to allow summer classes to take place outside. A sliding wall between the assembly space and entrance meant that a larger space could be created for community functions. The colour scheme was also revolutionary. At a time when the standard school colours were cream, green and brown, Clarke Hall pushed for a modern palette: pastel colours with white painted woodwork, and crimson ceilings for smaller rooms.

In 1938 he produced a report on production methods in housing that led him in 1941 to join the Committee for the Industrial and Scientific Provision of Housing. He was also one of two architect members of the Wood Committee, set up by the Ministry of Education in 1943 to consider standardised construction and layouts for the new schools needed after the war. He recognised that a greater austerity of design would follow the war but prefabrication proved an impossible ideal, as Clarke Hall quickly realised, because of the difficulty of assembling large numbers of elements from different sources. In consequence, his ideas returned to more traditional methods of construction.

After the World War II, he restarted his practice in a warehouse at 6 Mason's Yard in St James', London. The Education Act 1944, in which local by-laws were changed, made every school in the country obsolete. New schools were desperately needed and there was a lack of architects and skilled workforce to build them. Standard industrial practice couldn’t cope: buildings were thrown up without reference to architects and there was also a desperate shortage of materials. Clarke Hall had to use his ingenuity to adapt (often recycle) materials for new schools in Ormesby and Greenwich, designing trusses for large-span spaces with T-sections and bent re-bar for diagonals.

In the early 1950s the brief for schools began to change from three-form entry to much larger four-form entry, making the spread out plan unworkable, walking distances being too great and drainage runs too deep. This heralded the arrival of the compact plan form, initially resisted because of lack of ‘identity’ to the four houses (luckily one could be put in each of the corners). Fighting objections from both the headmaster and the Ministry, and also because of the tight site, Clarke Hall got his way on cost. Savings in the external envelope allowed the central courtyard to be glazed over. This form became the benchmark for all subsequent large schools.

Clarke Hall was also the sole assessor for the Hunstanton School competition won by Alison and Peter Smithson in 1950 and, against strong local opposition, championed their rigidly symmetrical design. Whereas all the other entries were ‘copies’ of Denis’s schools, the Smithsons’ design was the only one that progressed school design. He fought for their design despite the objections of the local councillors. The Smithsons’ project was nearly thrown out over poor costings but Clarke Hall proved their scheme was viable and they were duly awarded the contract.

In 1954, with more and more schools to do, he and Sam Scorer (who had joined him from the AA) opened an office in Lincoln to handle the northern schools.

Between 1948 and 1973 he and Scorer designed 27 schools for 11 different local authorities. He produced a system of top lighting for Middlesex County Council, the government having adopted his principles of natural light as a requirement for all schools.

His most ambitious post-war secondary school was that at Cranford, Middlesex, which in 1950-53 introduced a strikingly compact and economical square plan that was very different from the Richmond Girls' High School.

Denis’s last great school was again in Richmond. A secondary modern school on a tight sloping site, the compact plan lent itself to a bar-like structure set perpendicular to the contours, with classrooms on the top and larger spaces tucked underneath as the landscape falls away.

Aside from his many school designs, he also designed housing schemes in Hornchurch and near St Pancras Station, as well as civic centres in Egham, Surrey and Cranbrook, Kent. He was proud that all these buildings were directly commissioned, and that after the News Chronicle competition, he never again had to enter a competition.

Clarke Hall retired in September 1973 in consequence of ill-health. His practice, Denis Clarke Hall & Partners continued to operate from its Lincoln premises at 7 Lindum Terrace, under the name of Denis Clarke Hall & Sam Scorer. The firm is now known as Scorer Hawkins Architects.

Architectural work by Clarke Hall

 * Richmond Girls' High School (1937-40)
 * Cranford Secondary (1950-53)
 * Woodield Secondary Modern (1954)
 * Wexham County Primary
 * Richmond Secondary Modern (1960)