Jordan, Robert Furneaux 1905 - 1978

John Robert Furneaux Jordon [commonly known as Robert Furneux Jordon] was born in Birmingham, England on 10 April 1905. After attending Birmingham School of Art from 1923 to 1926, he studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London.  During his final two years at the AA he worked as an assistant in the office of office of George Stokes and Leonard Drysdale. In 1928 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects and in 1929  set up an architectural practice in Birmingham.

In 1934 he returned to the AA where he taught architectural history and design and in 1937 was appointed senior master in design. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1937. In the late 1930s, with Cecil Charles Handisyde (1908-2000) and George Fairweather (1906-1985), he formed the architectural partnership Jordan, Handisyde & Fairweather. They designed the Timber Development Board pavilion for the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow in 1938, a photograph of which is illustrated in 'Art and Industry' July 1938 p.15. They also designed a convalescent home in Copse Hill, Buckinghamshire.

During World War Two Jordan continued to teach at the AA while maintaining his architectural practice. Post-war architectural projects on which he worked included a school at Raynham in Essex (1947–50), and housing in Nutwell Street, Wandsworth, London (1947). From 1949 to 1951 he was Principal of the AA.

He continued to teach at the AA until 1963, and in 1960-61 was Hoffmann-Wood Professor of Architecture in the University of Leeds and in 1962 visiting Professor of Architecture at the University of Syracuse, however, from the 1950s onwards he focused much of his time on writing. He was architectural correspondent on The Observer and was the author of a number of books including European Architecture in Colour (1961); Victorian Architecture (1966); A Concise History of European Architecture (1969); and Le Corbusier (1972). In 1964 he made a television documentary for the BBC - The Rape of Utopia: the Disenchanted City. He also wrote a number of detective novels.

Jordan lived in London until 1966 when he moved to Burcombe in Wiltshire where he died on 14 May 1978