Robert Yorke Goodden was born in Over Compton, Dorset, England on 7 May 1909. He studied at the Architectural Association in London, from 1926 to 1931, following which he went into private practice as an architect and was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA) in 1933. During the late 1930s he also began working as an an industrial designer, silversmith and designer of textiles, wallpaper and glassware.
During World War Two he served in the Royal Navy's camouflage unit.
After the war he concentrated more on design and was involved in both the 'Britain Can Make It' exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, in 1946 (where he worked on the Leisure section) and the South Bank exhibition of the Festival of Britain in 1951 (for which he designed the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion with R. D. Russell).
In 1948 he designed a gold box for the Royal Society of Arts which was presented to the then Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) as a wedding present and in 1953 designed the ‘Queensway’ silk, cotton, rayon and lurex tissue fabric for Warner & Sons used for curtains and hangings in Westminster Abbey for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
During the 1950s he designed gold and silverware, ceremonial metalwork and glassware for King’s College Cambridge, and in 1961 he created metal foil murals for the S.S. ‘Canberra’. He engraved and sandblasted glass murals for Pilkington, and between 1969-71 Goodden, together with R.D. Russell, designed the Western Sculpture, Print Room and Oriental Galleries at the British Museum, London.
From 1948 to 1974 Goodden was Professor of Silversmithing and Jewellery at the Royal College. He also oversaw the Department of Industrial Glass.
Goodden co-designed with H.T. Cadbury-Brown and Hugh Casson, the RCA's new Darwin Building in Kensington Gore, London (1959-61).
Between 1967-74, Goodden was pro-Rector of the RCA. In 1947 Goodden was elewcted a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) by the Royal Society of Arts. Goodden died on 24 March 2002.