Dean Hawkes

Dean Hawkes was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, in 1938. His exact date of birth has not been made public. Little has been published about his parents or childhood. He grew up in the north west of England and chose architecture as a young man, training in Manchester before working in practice in the area.

Hawkes trained as an architect at the Regional College of Art in Manchester, now the Manchester School of Art. After joining the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture as a research assistant in 1965, he completed a PhD at Clare College, Cambridge, exploring how buildings respond to different climatic conditions. In 2016 the University of Westminster awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters.

Research and teaching at Cambridge (1965 to 1995). Hawkes began on 1 January 1965 as a research assistant on a Building Research Station project studying daylight in housing layouts with physical models under the department's artificial sky, the Dome. He went on to teach environmental design for three decades, was a founding member of the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies and was its director from 1979 to 1987. He was a Fellow of Darwin College from 1976.

Practice (1982 to 1994). With his former student Stephen Greenberg he ran Greenberg and Hawkes. The practice won four RIBA Architecture Awards, exhibited eleven projects at the Royal Academy of Arts and showed work at the Venice Biennale. His key buildings, listed in his published biography, included a house and studio in Doughty Mews, Bloomsbury; houses in Gisborne Road, Cambridge, and at Dottery, Dorset; a library at Maldon, Essex; and the Principal's Lodge at Newnham College, Cambridge.

Cardiff (1995 to 2002). As Professor of Architectural Design at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, he led design teaching while continuing to practise, and was a finalist in the international competition for the Welsh Assembly building, the Senedd.

Visiting posts and writing. He held visiting professorships in Hong Kong, Singapore, Glasgow, Huddersfield and Leicester. After 2002 he returned to Cambridge as a Darwin fellow and later emeritus fellow, and as emeritus professor at Cardiff wrote a series of influential books on environmental design and architectural history.

Hawkes was married to Christine, and the couple had children and grandchildren. Darwin College recalled that his young family grew up against the backdrop of the then newly founded college, and that he and Christine were regulars at lunches, dinners and events there until his illness in the summer of 2026. Around 1991 a small passive solar house in Cambridge was completed for a teacher and an architect then in their fifties, designed so they could live there for the rest of their lives; Hawkes later reported on twenty-five years of living with its daily and seasonal rhythms.

Hawkes argued that environmental design is not a technical add-on but part of the art of architecture. Over his career his work moved from the mainly technical concerns of daylight and energy towards what he called the technics and poetics of the architectural environment. His aim, he wrote, was to bridge the gap between technology and design. He was drawn to buildings that live with the seasons, admitting sun and daylight and allowing their occupants to adapt, and he championed the idea of the academic architect who researches, teaches and builds.

Hawkes is remembered as one of the pioneers of environmental thinking in British architecture and architectural education. The RIBA praised his commitment to the environmental agenda from a time when it was not fashionable or mainstream thinking, and his holistic approach to bringing environmental issues into studio teaching. Books such as The Environmental Tradition and The Environmental Imagination remain standard reading on the environmental history of architecture, and his former students and colleagues include many leading practitioners and researchers. The Cambridge Department of Architecture said he influenced generations of architects and academics.

Four RIBA Architecture Awards for Greenberg and Hawkes buildings, including an RIBA Architecture Award in 1992 for a passive solar house in Cambridge. PLEA Award (2000) for his contribution to teaching, research and practice in passive and low energy architecture. RIBA Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education (2010). Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Westminster (2016). Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Emeritus Professor, Cardiff University, and Emeritus Fellow, Darwin College, Cambridge.

Books: The Architecture of Energy (with J. Owers, Longman, 1982); Modern Country Homes in England (Cambridge University Press, 1986; paperback 2011); The Environmental Tradition (Spon, 1996); The Selective Environment: An Approach to Environmentally Responsive Architecture (with Jane McDonald and Koen Steemers, Spon); Energy Efficient Buildings: Architecture, Engineering, and Environment (with Arup and W. Forster, Norton, 2002); The Environmental Imagination: Technics and Poetics of the Architectural Environment (2008; second edition Routledge, 2019); Architecture and Climate (Routledge, 2012); The Architect and the Academy: Essays on Research and Environment (Routledge, 2021). He was also a regular contributor to the Architects' Journal and the Architectural Review.

Lectures and interviews include Imagining Environments at the AA School of Architecture (2014), Twenty-five years of circadian living at the VELUX Daylight Symposium in Berlin (2017), The window in British architecture in Copenhagen (2018), Living with the Seasons for Cambridge Architectural Research (2021), a VELUX daylight talk in Cambridge (2022) and the A is for Architecture podcast (2023).

Dean Hawkes died on 4 October 2026, aged 88, following a short illness that began in the summer of 2026. The specific cause and place of death have not been made public. The University of Cambridge Department of Architecture announced his death on 5 October 2026, and Darwin College published an obituary offering condolences to Christine, their children and grandchildren. Funeral arrangements had not been made public at the time this profile was written.