Geoffrey Paulson Townsend [commonly known as G. Paulson Townsend; also known as G.P. Townsend or Geoffrey Townsend] was born in Twickenham, Middlesex, England, on 11 May 1911. His father, William George Paulson Townsend (1868-1941) was an artist, and designer. He was editor of The Art Workers' Quarterly, and master of design at the Royal School of Needlework
By the age of twenty he had begun designing small houses in the Whitton and Twickenham districts of London. He was for a period employed as a draughtsman by the architect Robert Lutyens (1901-1972). He took evening-classes in architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic [now University of Westminster] where he met Eric Alfred Lyons (1912-1980) and in 1937 they formed an architectural partnership and subsequently worked on small housing schemes. The practice closed during World War Two but was reactivated after the war. Initially they worked on the restoration and repair of bomb-damaged buildings. In 1948 they completed Oaklands a housing scheme in Whitton which comprised four maisonette blocks set within landscaped grounds.
In 1953 Townsend founded his own development company, Bargood Estates, in conjunction with Henry Cushman, an agent for the Alliance Building Society. In 1954 Townsend, Cushman and Leslie Bilsby (who had acquired some land in Blackheath) formed Priory Hall Ltd. In 1957 they formed SPAN Developments Ltd, with Lyons as consultant architect, Townsend and Bilsby as joint managing directors. Ivor Cunningham (1928-2007) subsequently became a partner in Eric Lyons's practice and worked for Span on landscaping schemes
By the end of the 1960s Span had been involved in over seventy development schemes and had built over 2,000 houses, however, in the early 1970s they ran into financial difficulties and Townsend, Bilsby and Lyons withdrew from the company. Townsend then worked as an independent developer for a number of years before forming SPAN Environments Ltd., with Lyons and Cunningham acting as architectural consultants. Townsend died in Worthing, West Sussex, on 14 April 2002