Peter Faulkner Shepheard was born in Birkenhead, England, on 11 November 1913. He studied at Liverpool School of Architecture (1931-36) and was a graduate research scholar in the Department of Civic Design (1936-37). He subsequently worked as an architect, draughtsman, town planner, landscape architect and illustrator. He was employed by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning from 1943 to 1947 and by Stevenage Development Corporation as Deputy Chief Architect in 1947-48. From 1948 he was in partnership with Derek Bridgwater.
Shepheard was also on the executive of the MARS. Modern Architectural Research Group. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA) in 1938 and President of the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1965-66; and President of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1969 to 1971, He was Visiting Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania in 1959 and from 1962 to 1971, and subsequently Dean of Fine Arts from 1971 to 1979, and Professor of Architecture and Environmental Design from 1971 to 1994. Shepheard died in Camden, London on 11 April 2002.