Ian Appleton

[close] Ian Appleton (1939 - 2020) was an English architect with an expertise in theatre design.
He attended Kingston Grammar School, and then studied architecture at Kingston College of Art. He was then employed by some of the most important architects in London at the time, Chamberlin Powell and Bon, working on the radical new Barbican development in the City of London, and later joining Peter Moro and partners to work on the Nottingham Playhouse.

He continued to work on theatre projects, being project architect for the interior of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and also project architect for the design of the (recently listed) Gulbenkian Theatre in Hull.

In 1964 he came north to Edinburgh, to take the Civic Design Course at the Department of Urban Studies and Regional Planning headed by Percy Johnson-Marshall.

He was the first chairman of the Little Sparta Trust set up to support Little Sparta, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s greatest work of art set in the Pentland Hills. He was also the driving force behind the erection of a Monument to Patrick Geddes in Sandeman House, off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, sculpted by Kenny Hunter.