A warm, loving, gentle and naturally gifted man, Harry Osborne designed theatres, arts centres, social housing, creative spaces for young people, ecological buildings and houses for his many notable friends.

He was the son of Harry Osborne Snr and Vera (née Dodd). His younger sister, Jacqueline, was born seven years after him. His father worked for Prudential Insurance.

He grew up on Sidney Road in East London. The house backed onto Wanstead Flats, and was threatened by air raids during the war. He and his sister were briefly evacuated, but were brought home to London during the blitz - where his father joined the war time fire brigade.

Harry went to Leyton County High and excelled at sport, racing for Eton Manor Boys and Hackney at county level. He was sponsored to tour UK tennis tournaments by Slazenger while still at school. He became head boy and took part in international Boy Scout camps in Germany and Scandinavia. He began a life long love of the arts and theatre, playing Othello in a school production with a young Derick Jacobi in the audience.

While studying at Bartlett School of Architecture, University of London, he developed a modernist style and became interested in the environment. Throughout his work he sought to use environmentally efficacious materials, maximising natural lighting, natural materials and energy saving devices.

Harry was offered a prodigious place at MIT in Massachusett, which would have excused him from National Service. But he asked advice from a military careers officer, and ended up joining the army as one of the last National Service conscripts. He was enlisted as an officer and enjoyed his time as a peace-keeper in Cyprus - and became a lifelong partaker of it's food and wine.

On demob he joined Peter Dunham’s large Architect practice in Luton. Here he started a relationship with his boss’s daughter, the actor and artist Joanna Dunham. He had recognised her from the telephone queue while they were both at University of London - where she studied drama.

They married and moved back to London, where their careers flourished. Harry started his own architectural practice and the new growth of Housing Associations and action against homelessness (following the release of Ken Loach's ‘Cathy Come Home’) gave his social housing work an outlet.

Joanna starred in TV shows and toured the world as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. She was treated as a new star in the USA and was befriended by Marilyn Monroe, who suggested her for a role in George Steven’s star-studded epic “The Greatest Story Ever Told”. During filming Harry and Joanna formed lasting friendships with the cast; not least Dorothy Maguire and Gary Raymond, who became godparents to their children.

Through the Humanist Housing Association, set up by Moira and Lyndsey Burnett, Harry's firm built award winning social housing in London and Tunbridge Wells, where he worked with 1966 World Cup winner George Cohen. Over the following decades his sheltered housing schemes for the elderly and disadvantaged received a DoE design award and several Conservation Awards.

Children arrived, Abigail and Ben, and Harry began designing for a growing circle of actors, such as Robert Powell, John Alderton and Tim Pigott-Smith. Always a devoted father, and loving grandfather to five, he built a treasured family home in Keats Grove, North London; a two story glass, timber and brick construction, curved around an ancient pear tree, and flooded with natural light.

After his first marriage broke up, he began a relationship with his second wife, the actor Elizabeth (Liz) Bell. Apart from briefly moving to Sussex and Kent, Harry spent most of the rest of his life in the London borough of Camden.

Throughout the 1970s and '80s Harry and Liz's home thronged with their artistic friends. People who lived there included Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Sir Ben Kingsley, Robert Powell, Anti Apartheid activist and actor Yvonne Bryceland and Lisa Goddard. Guests included Michael Gambon, Babs from Pan’s People, Herbie Wise, director of I Claudius, Fiona Walker, Peter Farago, Mary McCusker, Colin Baker, Peter Boys, Karen Archer, David Collins, Jenny Quail, Jenny Twig, Simon Callow, Alison Steadman and many other friends. He eventually sold the house to Dame Janet Suzman.

He made David Christmas a partner in his firm, changing its name to Osborne Christmas, and young architects who’d worked for him went on to work on buildings such as the O2 arena. But policy changes in the Thatcher era made social housing work hard to find. The firm shrank from employing 40 people, to a handful of staff.

Amongst the firm’s theatre and arts projects, a favourite was the conversion of the Holy Trinity Church in Tunbridge Wells to a theatre and arts centre. This became an important platform for local culture.

Harry was much loved at, and derived endless pleasure from, Paddington Arts, which gives young people in the Ladbroke Grove area of London access to creative training and performance.

His most recognised building is Alan Ayckbourn’s Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. “A massive undertaking, requiring imagination and ingenuity.” recalls Sir Alan Ayckbourn. “Consummate architect that he was, he listened. Not just to me but to everyone involved. Miraculously Harry was able not only to accommodate and satisfy all these voices but also to add unique, major contributions, including a vital atrium to provide light for this otherwise windowless cinematic box. And a thoroughly modern round theatre space. It was truly a remarkable achievement. Without Harry there would be no Stephen Joseph Theatre. Indeed, I would go further and say without his vision, that whole 50-year dream would never have been realised.”

Harry is remembered by all for limitless generosity and profound humanity. He couldn't have been a more loving father, grandfather, brother, uncle, or a more considerate friend - or a better role model for how to live a life of kindness, and with love.