Diana Rowntree

• Name — Diana Rowntree • Born — 14 May 1915 • Died — 22 August 2008 • Education — Somerville College, Oxford Architectural Association School of Architecture • Spouse — Kenneth Rowntree • Practice — Jane Drew's firm

After graduating from Somerville College, Oxford and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1939, she joined Jane Drew's architecture practice, that at the time worked on a War Office scheme for faux factories designed to divert enemy bombers. In the mid-1950s Rowntree took on jobs within architectural press, establishing a position as first architectural writer for The Guardian and acting as news editor for the Architectural Design magazine. In 1964 she wrote Diana's Interior Design: A Penguin Handbook, called a pioneering work with an emphasis on minimalist rationality by The Guardian post mortem. By the mid-1960s she had resumed her own architectural practice in addition to her writing. Her husband was painter Kenneth Rowntree, whom she married 1939.