Mary Frances Mitchell (21 August 1923 – 1988) was a British landscape architect.
Life
Mitchell was born in
Downton in Wiltshire, 1923. Her parents were Nancy (born Salter) and Albert Edwin Mitchell. Her father was a farmer, and she enjoyed being outdoors. She attended
Clifton High School for Girls in Bristol.
She worked in South Africa after the war, and she returned to the UK in the 1950s, where she was employed by Birmingham's
City Architect's office.
[
In 1959-60 she was involved in planning the landscape of new land acquired by ]Birmingham University
, mottoeng = Through efforts to heights
, established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...
at the Vale in Edgbaston
Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre.
In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family a ...
. The brief was to preserve the "green and gracious appearance of this part of Birmingham" whilst building several halls of residence that would be separated on the 45 acre site. Mitchell organised quite extensive landscaping for the project, and the site is listed. The overall design of the site was said to influence later similar developments at York University and the University of East Anglia.
left, Tower block, Lee Bank Middleway
The Lee Bank
Lee Bank was an inner city area of Birmingham, England. It was part of the Edgbaston and Ladywood wards, inside the Middle Ring Road or Middleway, which surrounds Central Birmingham.
Lee Bank's neighbouring areas are Edgbaston, Ladywood, High ...
area was designed in 1960 as a single unit by Birmingham's City Architect A.G. Sheppard Fidler. These consisted of 6-8 storey, brick built structures, however, when landscape architect Mitchell was appointed to help in the design, taller twenty storey tower blocks were introduced.[''The Modern City Revisited'', Thomas Deckker, 2000, Taylor & Francis ()] The Lee Bank project was approved in stages between 1963 and 1967. It consisted of four 20 storey tower block
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdicti ...
s, containing 464 flats, and one twelve storey tower block.[Emporis: Lee Bank](_blank)
Mitchell became a fellow of the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1963. She established her own business and undertook work in Asia and the Middle East.[ and died in the same year.][
]
Written work
* ''The Pattern of Landscape''. Chichester: Packard Publishing, 1988 (with Sylvia Crowe)
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Mary Frances
1923 births
1988 deaths
People from Downton, Wiltshire
Landscape architects
British women architects
Women landscape architects
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