Adrian Gale was a practitioner, professor and critic with a career spanning over 60 years. He was part of a movement and network of architects that came to dominate UK architectural thinking and production in the second half of the 20th century. But, unlike so many of his prolific friends, it was not his output of buildings that characterised him, but his intellect and connectivity, coupled with a unique warmth and generosity which left an indelible mark on the architects and students who knew him.

Gale’s early contact with the modern movement set him on a path and stylistic position that never left him. Born in 1931 in Edenbridge in Kent, he trained at the Architectural Association in the early 1950s and with a student group took Le Corbusier out to lunch in London during the RIBA Gold Medal celebrations. 

He travelled to America, where he worked firstly in San Francisco and later crossed to Chicago to the studio of Mies van de Rohe. He met Frank Lloyd Wright too during this time. Through these interactions, Gale was one of the very last of a generation to have directly experienced the very milieu responsible for that most important architectural style of our age.