Reflecting on his remarkable 50-year career John was an inspirational, thoughtful, and highly motivated architect and urbanist and throughout his life he was passionate about improving the quality of life in neighbourhoods and places across the UK and internationally.

Trained as an architect at Cambridge University during the 1960s, John rejected the prevailing view of the architect as a heroic ‘form-maker’ and instead devoted his career to working with local people to create places that encourage social interaction and help nurture a strong sense of community, often in areas experiencing significant social and economic challenges.

Lea View House in Hackney is widely recognised as a seminal Community Architecture project. Shocked by the severity of the problems of the housing estate with high levels of crime, and anti-social behaviour, John opened an office on site and devised techniques enabling residents to participate in the transformation of their estate. At the time Charles Knevitt writing in The Times said ‘Pride, dignity, and self-respect have been restored at Lea View and Community Architecture was the process by which it came about’.

In the 1980s, John led a number of Inner-City regeneration projects throughout the UK. In each instance it was John’s irrepressible belief in the process of Community Planning to enable local people to control their destiny through harnessing community spirit and empowering people to be bold and take the difficult decisions in the design that enabled the transformation of their own neighbourhoods.

In 1998, the pioneering, multi-award-winning regeneration of the former Caterham Barracks marked the first time that a large-scale Collaborative Planning process had been promoted in the UK by a private developer. Today, the Village is a thriving mixed-use neighbourhood, located within the walls of a former Guards barracks and connected harmoniously with the adjacent community of Caterham on the Hill. John was the visionary who could see the potential of this opportunity helping ordinary people understand the dynamics of change. He harnessed his expertise and personal commitment to public participation to ensure that homes and mixed uses were delivered with the active engagement of and management by the local community.

John’s work extended beyond the UK to a wide range of masterplanning and transformation projects across Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Iceland, Sweden, Ireland and in the later stages of his career on a number of projects across China.

All of his work embraced the approach of placemaking; developed through an understanding of the design factors critical to the social success of the built environments; the distinction of public and private space, natural surveillance, distribution of public space and the provision of mixed uses promoting environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Today such views and approaches are seen as best practice, but it was rare for an architect to design from a standpoint of social interaction and ‘everyday life’ and to see places as more important than individual buildings.

In 2006, the growing prevalence of these principles led to John being instrumental in establishing the Academy of Urbanism (AoU), an autonomous, self-funded cross sector organisation set up to identify, learn from and disseminate best practice in placemaking throughout the UK and internationally. John was Founder Chairman of the AoU from 2006 to 2010 and Honorary President from 2010. Today the Academy is flourishing and influential, with over six hundred members bringing together the current and next generation of urban leaders, thinkers and practitioners.

Throughout his career John has led by example and drawing on his natural gift for leadership and gentle persuasion, has inspired colleagues, fellow professionals, developers, local authority officers and politicians to seek creative solutions to our built environments.

He has left an extraordinary legacy. As John wrote as the mission of the Academy of Urbanism, “Great places have the power to fire the imagination of their citizens. No one can create them on their own. If, collectively, we are to create them once again, we must first share a common view.”

John’s incredible career and life is captured in his book, ‘Creating Great Places’ which can be viewed here.

Our thoughts are with John’s family at this time.

John Thompson’s Career

1971: MA DipArch – Cambridge University School of Architecture

1969-1994: Founding Partner – Hunt Thompson Associates (now HTA)

1986: Founder Trustee – The Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture

1992-1999: Founder Member – Urban Village Forums

1994-2017: Founder Chairman – John Thompson & Partners / JTP LLP

2001-2011: Panel Member – Yorkshire Forward’s Urban Renaissance and Market Towns Panel

2004-2009: Chairman/Vice Chairman – RIBA Planning and Urbanism Group

2006-2010: Founder Chairman – The Academy of Urbanism

2010-2022: Honorary President – The Academy of Urbanism

2019: Presidential Citation – The American Institute of Architects

2019: Lifetime Achievement Award – Urban Design Group