(b London, 8 Sept 1914). English architect. He trained at the Architectural Association in London (1931–4), and for the next two years he worked with Wells Coates, the leading English Modernist. In 1937 he joined the architectural group TECTON, becoming a partner from 1946 until its dissolution two years later. The time with Coates and Tecton formed Lasdun’s uncompromisingly Modernist approach, which can be found in all his work. The concrete architecture of Le Corbusier was also a major inspiration to him; one of his earliest buildings, a house (1937–8) at 32 Newton Road, Paddington, London, is clearly indebted to Le Corbusier’s Maison Cook (1926), Boulogne-sur-Seine, Paris. From 1949 to 1959 Lasdun worked in conjunction with Lindsey Drake, and two projects in London from the early 1950s first introduced the cluster principle that also became a dominant feature in his work. At Hallfield Primary School (1951), Paddington, and the cluster housing (1952–5) at Bethnal Green, the separate functional elements are linked by circulation spaces. The housing was designed as multi-storey blocks of flats grouped around a central service and circulation core.

• Lasdun, Denys (Louis)
  • Fry, E. Maxwell
  • Nigeria, §IV, 2: Architecture: Modern influences
  • Norwich, §1(iv): History and urban development, after c 1650
  • Tecton
  • collaboration
    • Neel, Edric
  • groups and movements
    • Brutalism
  • works
    • Architectural model, §2(iii): The Romantic period and after
    • Cambridge (i), §1(ii): History and urban development, 1800 and after
    • England, §II, 6: Architecture, after c 1914
    • London, §II, 6: Urban development, after 1945
    • Theatre, §III, 4(ii)(a): Western world: 20th-century architecture