Fry, Edwin Maxwell (1899–1987)

Edwin Maxwell Fry, architect of modern British design and liberal social theory, brought insight to early 20th century Britain and to the global community. Fry’s work was dedicated to design theory and construct for the working class, for urban dwellers, for children, and, notably, for refugees and intellectual émigrés. With the British design firm Isokon, Fry endeavored to save endangered Bauhaus architects and designers, resulting in the British partnership of Gropius & Fry, German refugee and British sponsor. His later partnership was to be Fry & Drew. The primary work of the Gropius & Fry firm was Impington Village College (1936), Cambridgeshire. This ground-breaking open school design represented a social revolution in its time, combining education and community in the visually and socially integrated ‘village college’ concept. Its spreading form has become a norm for 20th century school design from the UK to the USA. Gropius & Fry thus created a major, lasting global design model – in Bauhaus terminology, a true Modern ‘Typeform’ – of contemporary social and educational architecture. For his lifelong dedication to international socially significant architecture, Maxwell Fry was named Commander of the British Empire.