Christopher Tunnard

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Christopher Tunnard (1910 — 1979) was an English landscape architect, garden designer and author of 'Gardens in the Modern Landscape' (1938). He was the cousin of the British surrealist artist John Tunnard (1900-1971).

Christopher Tunnard emigrated to America after its publication. Christopher Tunnard worked with Serge Chermayeff on Bentley Wood and with Raymond McGrath on St Ann's Hill in Chertsey. Tunnard's father was native to Frampton in Lincolnshire, England, and had moved to Canada as a young man. Christopher, born and educated in Victoria, British Columbia, went to England in 1929 and obtained a Diploma from the Royal Horticultural Society in 1930. From 1932 to 1935 he worked as a garden designer for Percy Cane, whose style was Arts and Crafts. Tunnard then embarked on a European tour and became interested in avant-garde art and architecture. In Belgium he met Jean Caneel-Claes and they issued a joint manifesto. Tunnard's cousin John Tunnard the British surrealist artist and Christopher came to know the MARS Group. He wrote a series of articles for the Architectural Review, later re-published as Gardens in the modern landscape (1938). One can criticise the book for its knock-about approach to history but there is no doubting the seriousness of Tunnard's enthusiasm for the modern movement. It is perhaps best seen in his design, with Serge Chermayeff, for Bentley Wood at Halland in Sussex.

In 1939 Tunnard emigrated to America, invited by Walter Gropius to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He was drafted into the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1943 and after the war took a job teaching city planning at Yale. The work excited him and, though he designed a few gardens in America, Tunnard became detached from the mainstream of garden and landscape design. It was a great loss to the discipline.