Joseph Emberton

Emberton began his training in 1911 at the Kensington College of Art (now the Royal College of Art), where the Professor of Ornament and Design was W.R. Lethaby. Lethaby was generally considered the most important architectural theorist since Pugin and only a year before Emberton's arrival had delivered his famous lecture on the Architecture of Adventure, an impassioned plea for an architecture based on the spirit of science and innovation rather than tradition and precedent.

On completion of his training, Emberton began to specialise in commercial and retail work, particularly shops and trade exhibitions. In 1922 he was taken into partnership by Percy Westwood who had built up a good practice in this field through contacts such as that with Austin Reed. In 1926 the partnership ended and Emberton commenced his own practice, still in the same field. Thus in the 1920s his commissions included the Advertising Association's exhibition site in west London and the State Express Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition (1924-5), while in the 1930s his work included shops for Timothy White's, Simpson's in Picadilly, HMV in Oxford Street and the entertainment building at Blackpool Pleasure Beach (1939).