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The architect John Madin has passed away aged 87.
Designer of the old Central Library in Centenary Square.
Obituary - John Madin
Designer of the old Central Library in Centenary Square.
Obituary - John Madin
John Hardcastle Dalton Madin, was born in Moseley, Birmingham, on March 23, 1924, an only child.
His father William was a master builder and cabinetmaker, who taught Madin bricklaying and carpentry, while his mother Hilda was artistic and encouraged her son to draw and paint.
The family lived in a detached Victorian villa at 158 Yardley Wood Road, Moseley, where father and son built a conservatory and an extension together.
Madin attended Stanley House School in Edgbaston and by the age of 12 was convinced he had to be an architect.
On leaving school in 1940 at 16, Madin found a job in the Corporation architect’s offices in the Council House in Birmingham where one of his duties was taking the City Engineer, Herbert Manzoni (1899–1972), his lunch while he sat next to the large coal fire in his office.
When Birmingham was bombed in 1940, Madin did fire-watch duty from the clock tower from where he could see most of the city centre and mark on a map where the bombs had fallen.
Encouraged by Manzoni, Madin began his studies in the autumn of 1940 at the Birmingham School of Architecture, then part of the School of Art in Margaret Street, close to the Council House.