Peter Collins

Architecture historian, England (became Canadian citizen 1962)
Peter Collins was one of the leading architectural historians of his generation and a
doyen of the English-language historians and theorists of 20th-century architecture. Born
in Leeds in Yorkshire in 1920, his architectural studies at Leeds College of Art began in
1936 (diploma in architecture in 1948) but were interrupted by seven years in the British
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army, serving in the Yorkshire Hussars; as an intelligence officer in the Middle East and
Italy; and finally as captain, General Staff at the War Office, London. On graduation, he
went to Switzerland and France to work on the design of reinforced-concrete structures,
including working on Auguste Perret’s reconstruction of Le Havre. In 1951 he returned to
England to lecture in architecture at Manchester and, later, to begin graduate work there
under Professor Cordingly. His Master of Arts thesis, “The Development of Architectural
Theory in France in the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” was completed in 1955. The year
before that, he received a Silver Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects for
his essay “Jacques-Françis Blondel.” In Paris in August 1953, he married Margaret
Taylor of Ottawa, leading to his later relocation to Canada.
The year he completed his work at Manchester, Collins received a Fulbright Traveling
Scholarship and an appointment to lecture in architectural history at Yale University. In
1956 he was appointed an associate professor at McGill University, and in 1962, he was
appointed a full professor of architecture. He became responsible for reorganizing the
undergraduate courses in the history and theory of architecture and completed a book that
was inspired by his work with Perret, Concrete: The Vis ion of a New Architectu re, earning him the Henry Florence Architectural
Book Scholarship in 1960. In 1962 he became a Canadian citizen.
In 1965 Collins wrote his most successful book, Changing Ideals in Modern Archi tecture, which traces the intellectual
development of modern architectural theories. It is the antithesis of a picture book.
Buildings are shown as the result of thoughts based on the ideals of each age of Western
culture. Collins recognized the importance of analogies and metaphors in architectural
iconography. In this he followed in the footsteps of Geoffrey Scott’s The Architecture of H umanism (1924).
That same year, during which he took a sabbatical leave from McGill, Collins returned
to Yale as a research fellow to study at the University Law School, leading to a Master of
Laws degree in 1971 from Queens College, Montreal, for his thesis “Amenity, a Study of
Jurisprudential Concepts Which Affect the Legal Control of Urban Environments, and
Their Relevance to Canadian Constitutional Law.” Based on this, his last book, Architectural Judgmen t
(1971), a comparative study in decision making in architecture and law, was published. In
this seminal work, Collins explored the relevance of architectural journals and found
them sadly wanting. Too often, they are seen to be editorial propaganda for favored
architects and are filled with little effective criticism. In comparing them with law
journals, Collins showed how the focus on a full understanding of precedent in the latter
might well be an appropriate standard to which architectural journals might aspire, with
the benefit of advancing standards of architecture. In this and his other writings, he
constantly pointed to the social and cultural standards by which architecture should be
judged.
An ideal teacher, always well prepared himself, Collins encouraged a rigorous
attention to detail among his students. In addition about 100 essays and reviews have
appeared with his name in most of the architectural periodicals in North America and
England, and for a time he was architectural correspondent to the Manches ter Guardian. He also wrote the
article “Architectural Theory” for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Early in his career, Collins developed a special
love and knowledge of the architecture of France. This gave him standards by which to
measure and allowed him to comment seriously on all kinds of architecture. An eye for
humbug always aroused a quick response in him. In 1972 the American Institute of
Architects’ Architecture Critic’s Citation recognized his eminent contribution to
architectural thought.