Peter Smithson was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1923 and studied architecture and town planning at King's College, Durham, his training interrupted by wartime service with the Madras Sappers and Miners in India and Burma. He met Alison Gill at Durham; they married in 1949 and opened a joint practice the following year, working together until her death in 1993 with every commission published under both names. Winning the competition for Hunstanton School in 1949 gave the pair, and the term New Brutalism, their first public identity; the Economist Building and Robin Hood Gardens followed, alongside a large body of writing and teaching that carried their arguments further than their small built output could. Peter was the more active theorist of Team 10's 1953 revolt against orthodox CIAM planning, and later taught at Bath and the Architectural Association.
