Gavin Stamp

Gavin Stamp (born 15 March 1948) is a British writer and architectural historian. He is a trustee of the Twentieth Century Society, a registered charity which promotes the appreciation of modern architecture and the conservation of Britain’s architectural heritage. He writes the "Nooks and Corners" column for Private Eye under the pseudonym Piloti and regularly contributes essays on architecture to the fine arts and collector's magazine Apollo.

Academic career

From 1990 until 2003 he taught at the Mackintosh School of Architecture at the Glasgow School of Art. Currently he teaches "Architecture in London: A Field Study" at New York University in London, where he leads his students on brisk walking tours throughout the city.

Television appearances

Gavin Stamp has presented a number of programmes about architecture for Channel 5. In 2005 he presented Pevsner’s Cities: Liverpool and Pevsner’s Cities: Newcastle and in 2006 Pevsner's Cities: Oxford; each programme profiled the cities with reference to the writings of architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner. In 2007 he presented a five-part architectural travel series Gavin Stamp’s Orient Express. Stamp travelled by train along the original Orient Express route, stopping off on the way to look at architecture and to see how the history of Eastern Europe is told in its buildings.

Stamp has also made various television appearances as an expert interviewee: in 1986 he appeared in A Sense of the Past, a 6 part series for schools produced by Yorkshire Television about the relationship between buildings and local history; in 1990 he was interviewed for Design Classics: The Telephone Box, a favourite subject of Stamp's and one he has written about; in 1995 he appeared as guest expert in an episode of One Foot in the Past about Brunel; and in 2003 he was interviewed by Paul Binski for an episode of Channel Five's Divine Designs which profiled Alexander 'Greek' Thomson's St. Vincent Street Free Church in Glasgow.

Personal life

Gavin's daughter Cecilia played bass and sang in the Scots ElectroPop band Futuristic Retro Champions.

Publications

• Britain's Lost Cities (2007). London: Aurum. ISBN 9781845132644
• The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme (2006). London: Profile. ISBN 9781861978110
• An Architect of Promise: George Gilbert Scott, Jr. (2002). Donington: Shaun Tyas. ISBN 9781900289511
• Edwin Lutyens: Country Houses (2001). London: Aurum. ISBN 9781854107633
• Personal and Professional Recollections of George Gilbert Scott (1995). Stamford: Paul Watkins. ISBN 9781871615265
• (with Phil Sayer) Alexander "Greek" Thomson (1999). London: L. King. ISBN 9781856691611
• (with Sam McKinstry) "Greek" Thomson: Neo-Classical Architectural Theory, Buildings and Interiors (1993). Edinburgh University Press. OCLC 80434139
• Telephone Boxes (1989). London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 9780701133665
• The Changing Metropolis: Earliest Photographs of London 1839–1879 (1984). London: Viking. ISBN 9780670800582
• (with Colin Amery) Victorian Buildings of London, 1837-1887: An Illustrated Guide (1980). London: Architectural Press. ISBN 9780851395005
• The Great Perspectivists (1982). London: Trefoil. ISBN 9780862940027
• (with Andre Goulancourt) The English House, 1860–1914: the flowering of English domestic architecture (1986). London: Faber. ISBN 9780571130474
• Temples of Power: Architecture of Electricity in London (1979). London: Gardners. ISBN 9780950215495
• Britain in the Thirties (1979). London: Architectural Design. ISBN 9780847853113