Peter Carter on Moto Guzzi, Near Stodmarsh, Kent, 1988. Photographer unknown. In Peter Carter, Aide Mémoire (London: privately printed, 2011). CCA Library. Gift of Peter Carter.
Peter Carter (7 March 1927?2 March 2017) was an extraordinarily thoughtful architect concerned with creating an agreeable and humane environment for workers in industrial and corporate environments. Carter was born in London. Before he was ten years old, frequent visits to the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, where his father was a member of the festival choir, were determinant in his early decision to be an architect so that he could ?one day design and build theatres.?[1]
Carter studied architecture at London?s Northern Polytechnic School of Architecture from 1943 until 1950, and his fifth-year thesis project was a complete design for the Watergate Theatre, Adelphi, London, on the site of the Little Theatre, which had been destroyed during the Second World War. From 1950 until 1956, Carter worked on a number of postwar housing projects for the newly formed London County Council Architects? Department, under the directorship of Sir Leslie Martin, alongside three other recent graduates in architecture, Alan Colquhoun, William Howell, and Colin Saint John Wilson. During the same period, with Wilson, Carter undertook nine independent competition submissions, including the Coventry Cathedral Competition (1951) and a section of the This is Tomorrow exhibition (1956) in London. In 1956, Carter turned down an a...