Architect, England Although English by birth and training, Ralph Erskine has spent the majority of his working life in Sweden. Born in North London, Erskine was sent to the coeducational Friends’ School at Saffron Walden near Cambridge (1925–31), where many of his political and ethical values were formed. In 1932, he entered the Regent Street Polytechnic, at first to study surveying, and then architecture. Among his fellow students was Gordon Cullen, the illustrator, whose townscape drawings were to have an important influence on the representation of the postwar New Towns in Britain. Following qualification, Erskine sought work with the new modernist firms in London but ended up working for planner and architect Louis de Soissons, then active in the design of Welwyn Garden City, the first of Ebeneezer Howard’s garden cities. Attracted by the humane modernism of the International Exhibition in Stockholm (1930) and the work of architects such as Erik Gunnar Asplund, Uno Ahrén, and Sigur...