Blanco White, Margaret Justin 1911 - 2001

Margaret Justin Blanco White [also known as Justin Blanco White and as Margaret Justin Waddington] was born at 30 Pembroke Square, Kensington, London, on 11 December 1911.  In 1929 she enrolled at the Architectural Association Schools in London  During her time at the AA she won the school's travelling scholarship for three successive years and was awarded the RIBA Henry Jarvis Studentship in 1933. She graduated in 1934 and over the next five years worked on a small number of private housing projects, including Shawms, a modernist house in Cambridge, for Dr George Rushton of Christ’s College. At the same time she was involved social housing schemes and in 1936 collaborated with fellow AA graduate Mary Beaumont Crowley [later Medd] on Housing: A European Survey (1936) which examined what Britain could learn from housing schemes in other countries.

In 1936 she joined Prixis, an architectural practice formed by former AA students David Goddard and John Marshall, and later that year married Conrad Hal Waddington (1905–1975), a geneticist and embryologist. In 1938-39 she spent a period working in studios in the USA.

In 1939 Blanco White and Crowley teamed up with the architect Ernö Goldfinger in submitting an entry for a competition sponsored by the Building Centre to design evacuation camps and nurseries for mothers and children.

During World War Two Blanco White was involved in bomb-damaged re-housing schemes and was responsible for the Blitz Accommodation and Housing report published by the Association of Architects, Surveyors and Technical Assistants (AASTA).  Towards the end of the war she was engaged by Max Lock to work on the County Borough of Middlesbrough Survey and Plan, published in 1946.

In 1948, with Elizabeth Layton, she co-authored The School Looks Around A Book for Teachers about Local Surveys. In the late 1940s her husband was appointed to a post at the University of Edinburgh and with him moved to Scotland.  She was subsequently appointed Superintending Architect of the Scottish Office anduring the 1950s researched the development of housing types and new building methods.  By the 1960s the emphasis of her research was focused on the design of hospital buildings.

Blanco White was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA) in 1939 and a Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (FRIAS) in 1964.  She was also a member of the Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS Group).  In 1973 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her work as Superintending Architect of the Scottish Office..

In 1975 her husband died and in the late 1980s she retired and moved to Livorno, Italy.  She died in Cambridge on 1 November 2001.