Drew, (Dame) Jane (Joyce) Beverley (1911–96). British Modernist architect, who founded an all-women firm in 1940. Later, she was a founder-partner with E. Maxwell Fry (her husband from 1942) of Fry, Drew,&Partners, London (1945), of which Lasdun became a partner in 1951. The firm worked extensively in West Africa, designing educational buildings in Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia, and was the force behind the establishment of the first School of Tropical Architecture by the Architectural Association of London. From the 1950s Drew and her colleagues worked on the designs for the new capital of the Punjab, India, at Chandigarh, in association with Le Corbusier (with whom she became emotionally involved) and Pierre Jeanneret: Corbusier redesigned the original master-plan, and Drew was involved in the genesis of colleges, health-centres, housing, shopping areas, and schools. She also designed buildings in Iran, Ceylon, and Ghana, as well as housing for Harlow (Essex), Welwyn, and Hatfield (both Herts.) in the 1960s which was much admired at the time. She was responsible for the Open University buildings at Milton Keynes, Bucks. (1969–77). A member of the MARS group, she also published various works including Architecture for Children (1944) and Kitchen Planning (1945), as well as several books on tropical architecture in collaboration with Fry.

Bibliography

Bristol Centre for the Advancement of Architecture (1986);
Brockman (1978);
Fry & and Drew (1947, 1956, 1964, 1976);
K. Parker (1993);
The Times, 1 Aug. 1996