(b Bishop’s Stortford, 31 May 1939). English architect. He trained at the Architectural Association, London (1958–63). From 1972 he worked in partnership with his wife Fenella Mary Anne Dixon (née Clemens) and from 1984 with Edward Jones. Dixon first came to international prominence in 1972 when he was selected with Fenella Dixon to design the new County Hall at Northampton, although his well-publicized proposal of a ten-storey Modernist pyramid was rejected due to spending cuts. A subsequent tour of Britain’s towns and cities triggered ideas of ‘contextual architecture’ and its relation to art and history. A proponent of Post-modern architecture, Dixon completed a number of public commissions awarded in open competition, including the Housing Association project, St Mark’s Road, west London (1979–80); the new coffee shop at the Tate Gallery, London (1981); and the redesign of the interior offices at—and the extension to—the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London (1987). Dixon’s gifts lay particularly in his ability to interpret a development with an imaginative boldness of vision. The new gallery of the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (1992), was designed as a massive Minimalist sculpture, faced with black polished granite, the interior completed in oak and stone. On the other hand, the housing projects in west London, perhaps his most successful projects, are modest in scale. These low-budget constructions, with their open-plan layout, make a succinct model for inexpensive housing and its place in a progressive society. At Lanark Road, Maida Vale, London, Dixon built a group of five villa-style houses (1984), each of which was subdivided into seven flats, which were offered to tenants on a housing list at a modest fixed price.

• Dixon, Jeremy
  • Scotland, §II, 5: Architecture, after 1914
  • Town hall, §4: Municipal building in the 20th century