To mark the occasion, a public exhibition entitled ‘Architecture, Landscape & the City’ opens today (Monday 21st July) in the exhibition space in the University’s Western Bank Library.
Curated by Dr Xiang Ren and Dr Jan Woudstra with staff from the Special Collections, Heritage and Archives team, the exhibition brings together archival and design objects including drawings, models, photographs, letters, short films, and 3D scanning videos from The Peter Blundell Jones Archive and The Peter Blundell Jones Library, to explore the internationally influential practice, research and teaching of Peter Blundell Jones.
The exhibition also offers the rare chance to see the amazing, detailed model of Sheffield city centre in 1900 which was made by his students in the late 1990s.
PBJ (as he was fondly known) has been described as the pre-eminent architectural historian of his generation; a scholar who ‘saw architecture essentially as a human discipline’, truly appreciating the historical and social purpose of a building, and inspiring thousands of his students to do the same.
He published on a prolific scale, writing over 500 journal articles and thirteen books, including monographs on the work of previously marginalised architects including Hans Scharoun and Hugo Häring. Although predominantly an academic, Peter also practised as an architect, designing a number of buildings including The Round House in Stoke Canon, Devon, which is featured in Pevsner’s Buildings of England, and the conversion of an eighteenth-century water mill into his family home.
This exhibition will also include an opening ceremony on 25th September and a book launch on 26th September. It will run until 14th December 2025.