The architect and designer John Morton, who has died aged 97, was one half of Lupton Morton, a leading manufacturer of modern furniture in the 1950s and 60s responsible for the popular Campus range, and an innovator in shared workspaces.
After creating a dual reputation in traditional craftsmanship and high-end industrial design with Tom Lupton, a fellow Architectural Association student, Morton grasped the opportunity offered by the expansion of the universities in the early 60s. He initiated the Living and Learning exhibition, touring towns where new universities were planned. The outcome was Campus, a range of flat-pack self-assembly furniture. By 1967, 18 universities had purchased Campus, and it was also sold to the public through a number of innovative schemes. One direct marketing campaign, through the Sunday Times’ colour supplement, accepted payment by Visa credit card, then a novel idea; at weekends it was sold directly from the factory in Wallingford, on the Thames in Oxfordshire..
Campus used beech frames (natural or spray-painted in dark green, red or white as desired) assembled with Allen keys. The easy chair had a Pirelli rubber seat which was stretched over hooks in the corners with a lever provided in the package. The generous single bed had a foam rubber mattress and back cushions deep enough to make it work as a sofa. The tactile fabrics for these pieces came in a range of fashionable 60s colours: cyclamen, jade green, burnt orange, peat, rust and indigo. Storage units and shelves formed part of the kit, all at attractive prices.
John was born near Birmingham to Arthur Morton, a factory worker, and his wife, Gladys (nee Goode). He attended Hinckley grammar school, before training as a woodwork teacher at Saltley College, a teachers’ training college linked to Birmingham College of Art. During the war, he had a role in camouflage in the Middle East “to encourage people not to be shot at and killed”, as he put it. He was then moved to the RAF, where he qualified as a pilot as the war ended.
Demobbed, Morton studied at the Architectural Association, in London, which opened a new world of possibility. It was on a visit to Denmark and Sweden in 1947 that he was struck by the sophistication and universality of modern design, then unknown in Britain. After assisting the architects Robert Goodden and RD Russell on the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion for the Festival of Britain, he began to talk to Lupton, who came from a prosperous Yorkshire family with a mill in Leeds.
The pair set up as designers and makers of furniture, choosing Wallingford as their location. Luckily, Lupton’s wife, Ruth, received a legacy from an aunt, which provided the start-up capital in 1952 for a small factory where vellum had once been prepared, and a workforce of two builders, both ex-servicemen. Morton and his Danish wife, Kathe Dirks, an interior designer, built a house at Wallingford. They had two children: a daughter, Lone, and son, Peter. Meanwhile, Morton and Lupton continued to practise as architects on a small scale. Twice there were fires in the factory, but they recovered each time, eventually employing 100 people.
Their firm, LM Furniture, mostly supplied furniture to offices and corporations, but also made pieces by other designers, including Gordon Russell and RD Russell, and Ronald Carter, to order, and took on bespoke commissions. These included fitting out a boardroom at the Shell headquarters on the South Bank, in London, and outdoor bench seating in cast iron and hardwood for the observation deck at the expanded Heathrow airport. The LM Outdoor Seat became a long-running production item, and they made a range of office furniture, Quorum.
The partners also worked in collaboration with the architect Tom Hancock. Their catalogues, designed by the British graphic designer Derek Birdsall, showed room sets designed by Kathe. A Lupton Morton desk, donated by John and Kathe Morton, is in the permanent collection of the V&A, London.
But larger firms, such as Gordon Russell, were better able to survive in a cut-throat world, and as the partners’ bank manager continually warned them, LM Furniture was trying to do too many difficult things. In 1969, a complex series of manoeuvres led to its acquisition by Ryman Conran, the brief partnership of Ryman stationery and Terence Conran. Ryman Conran continued Campus for a while, with the range retailing at Habitat until the late 70s.
Earlier in that decade, Morton had moved to Chiswick, west London. There he collaborated with the architect David Rock and office space expert John Townsend in converting the empty Sanderson wallpaper factory into around 70 individual workspaces for craftspeople, architects and designers, who shared administrative staff, facilities and costs. Known as Barley Mow workspace, it opened in 1976 and continues today, setting the standard for many similar projects. Morton was appointed MBE for this endeavour.
He is survived by Kathe, Lone and Peter, four grandchildren, one great-granddaughter, and his sister, Mary.
• John Morton, architect and designer, born 14 August 1919; died 19 April 2017
