The Brian Milne Collection
Brian Milne was an architect employed by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation from 1971 to 1983. He worked in the Infrastructure Design Group who designed children’s play areas and street furniture, such as lamp-posts, benches, etc. The collection of photographic slides were donated by Brian’s son Patrick, for scanning as a digital collection.
NOTE: As the original images were slides, many of the images have been reversed left-to-right by mistake when they were scanned.
Brian Milne studied at Ipswich School of Art where he gained the National Diploma in Design for painting and lithography. During this time he worked for Geoffrey Clark, one of the Coventry Cathedral artists. This established an early interest in stained glass, and in 1959 he became a student in the Royal College of Art stained glass department. There he studied under another Coventry Cathedral artist Lawrence Lee, eventually gaining a diploma, silver medal and post-graduate fourth year.
After leaving college he moved to Colchester, Essex, and worked on a variety of private, public and church stained glass commissions. Also at that time he started teaching at art schools.
In 1966 he joined the newly formed Art/Design Group at the Greater London Council. This involved working with housing and landscape architects on the design and detailing of buildings and associated open space, producing murals, sculpture, play equipment and colour schemes.
In 1971 he moved to Newport Pagnell to work with the planning and design team building the new city of Milton Keynes. Here he concentrated on architectural model making, street furniture design, being responsible for the now widely familiar perforated metal bench seat and play areas and their equipment.
In 1983 he left the MKDC and set up as a stained glass artist. Amongst his commissions have been windows for Constructive Individuals self-build houses, Giffard Park Housing Co-operative in Milton Keynes, St Paul’s Church in Tadley and two Greene King pubs, The Cricketers at Oldbrook Milton Keynes and The Barn Owl at Northampton. He also undertook wood carving and metal-work commissions.
Unfortunately during this time Brian was diagnosed with bi-polar disease and sadly died at the age of 63 in 1996.
No Comments
Add a comment about this page