Francis Reginald Stevens Yorke (3 December 1906 – 10 June 1962), known professionally as F. R. S. Yorke and informally as Kay or K, was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 and author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

.

One of the first native British architects to design in a modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 style, he made numerous contacts with leading European architects while contributing to the Architects Journal

Architects Journal

The Architects' Journal is a weekly architectural magazine published in London by Emap. The first edition was produced in 1896. Commonly referred to by architects as the AJ, its articles cover matters of more immediate interest than its sister publication the Architectural Review...

in the 1930s, and in 1933 was secretary and founder member of the MARS Group

MARS Group

The Modern Architectural Research Group, or MARS Group, was a British architectural think tank founded in 1933 by several prominent architects and architectural critics of the time involved in the British modernist movement...

. Between 1935 and 1937 he worked in partnership with the Hungarian

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 architect and former Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 teacher Marcel Breuer

Marcel Breuer

Marcel Lajos Breuer , was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent. One of the masters of Modernism, Breuer displayed interest in modular construction and simple forms.- Life and work :Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at...

, before forming the Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall partnership in 1944, with whom he designed many post-war buildings including St Thomas' Hospital

St Thomas' Hospital

St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS hospital in London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It has provided health care freely or under charitable auspices since the 12th century and was originally located in Southwark.St Thomas' Hospital is accessible...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Yorke was born in Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...

, where his father was also an architect, and studied architecture and planning at the Birmingham School of Architecture, where his fellow students included other notable early modernist figures including Richard Sheppard

Richard Sheppard

Richard or Dick Sheppard is the name of:* Hugh Richard Lawrie Sheppard , known as Richard or Dick Sheppard, English clergyman and pacifist* Richard Herbert Sheppard , English architect...

, Frederick Gibberd

Frederick Gibberd

Sir Frederick Ernest Gibberd was an English architect and landscape designer.Gibberd was born in Coventry, the eldest of the five children of a local tailor, and was educated at the city's King Henry VIII School...

, Colin Penn and Robert Furneaux Jordan

Robert Furneaux Jordan

Robert Furneaux Jordan was an English architect, architectural critic and novelist. Jordan was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, Birmingham School of Art, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. He married Eira Furneaux Jordan in 1965...

.

The Modern House

In 1934, Yorke wrote The Modern House, a book that introduced modernist houses, fourteen pages of which were dedicated to English examples. He wrote a follow-up article in the Architectural Review in 1936 focusing on the use of concrete and this included a further eleven English houses. These contributions helped lay the basis for the postwar English fascination with concrete. In 1937 he published The Modern House in England which illustrated houses from a number of his fellows from the MARS group. The book was split into chapters on brick and stone, timber frame and concrete. It included a foreword by William Lethaby

William Lethaby

William Richard Lethaby was an English architect and architectural historian whose ideas were highly influential on the late Arts and Crafts and early Modern movements in architecture, and in the fields of conservation and art education.-Early life:Lethaby was born in Barnstaple, Devon, the son of...

Notable Buildings

• House at Nast Hyde, Hatfield (1935)
• Gane Pavilion
  Gane Pavilion
  The Gane Pavilion or Gane's Pavilion was a temporary building designed by the modernist architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer and F. R. S. Yorke and built in Bristol in the United Kingdom. The pavilion was commissioned by Crofton Gane, a Bristol-based furniture manufacturer, as a showroom...
  
  , Bristol (1936), with Marcel Breuer
• House in High Street, Iver (1936)
• House at Angmering-on-Sea (1937) with Marcel Breuer
• Houses at Eton (1938), with Marcel Breuer
• Seven cottages, Stratford-on-Avon (1939) with F.W.B. Yorke
• St Thomas' Hospital, London, with YRM architects