Good to read Daisy Froud’s essay ‘Role Models’ in The Architects Journal 241.03 dated 23.01.15, discussing Elizabeth Denby (1894-) and Marjory Allen (1897-) as pioneers in the promotion of community engagement as a feature of architectural practice. Denby’s “genuine understanding of how working communities lived, and wanted to live” is attributed to 10 years with a housing association in Kensington having studied social science at LSE, leading her to “focus on learning from, and involving the end-user in, design processes.”
The AJ mentions a 1942 article on her online in TheAJ.co.uk/WIA. Lady Allen of Hurtwood, by contrast, qualified as a landscape architect and “was responsible for bringing the ‘adventure playground’ concept to Britain, having encountered it in Denmark as part of research into childcare approaches... she argued for it passionately, not just as a framework for more empowering and democratic play, but as an alternative model for London’s post-war reconstruction.” In contrast to the technocratic, tabula rasa plans of individuals such as Abercrombie, she believed (like Denby – and unusual for the time) in a more incremental approach, with citizens being actively involved in the design process.