Patrick Gwynne was perhaps our last direct connection with the generation of architects who introduced modern architecture into this country in the 1930s. His continuous evolution of domestic architecture over 70 years can be seen as a vital thread extending the celebrated tradition of the English house documented by Herman Muthesius a century ago.

Alban Patrick Gwynne, born in 1913, was educated at Harrow and began his architectural training as an articled pupil of John Coleridge, a former assistant of Edwyn Lutyens. As for many young aspiring Modernists of the Thirties, however, it was the radical developments in modern architecture on the Continent — both visited and read about — that provided the crucial inspiration.

Gwynne’s search for a suitable training led him to the office of Wells Coates, where he worked alongside Denys Lasdun and began his first and arguably most significant commission. The Homewood, just outside Esher in Surrey — latterly given to the National Trust — was designed for his parents on a generous budget when Gwynne was only 24. Finished in May 1938, it is the largest and most accomplished translation of Corbusian domestic architecture to be achieved in this country during that pioneer period.

Engineered, with Felix Samuely, in reinforced concrete, the house is raised on pilotis (stilts) with spacious volumes, expansive fenêtres en longeur and generous terraces, acknowledging its designer’s clear debt to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie at Poissy. But Gwynne’s precocious debut was no polite copy. Lavishly fitted out and furnished, The Homewood also provided a rare demonstration of how “heroic” Modernism could be elegant, epicurean and, above all, English. The coincidence of its comprehensive publication in the Architectural Review of September 1939 with the outbreak of war perhaps prevented Gwynne’s achievement reaching the wide audience it deserved.

Returning from Canada after RAF service during the war years, Gwynne, who never married, resumed his practice from The Homewood, where he continued to live for the rest of his life, both his parents having died in 1942. After the difficulties of building in the immediate postwar period of material shortages, his career advanced with an unbroken sequence of private house commissions. Many of these were on choice sites and for distinguished or wealthy clients — Jack Hawkins and Laurence Harvey, Leslie Bilsby, Charles Forte and Gerald Bentall — and several are now listed.

There were public buildings and larger projects as well, such as the Theatre Royal in York, the much-loved restaurants in Hyde Park (one now regrettably demolished), medical centres, shops, apartments and pioneering motorway buildings. But it is the residential work that revealed Gwynne’s extraordinary architectural genius, with his faultless sense of placing, innovative plan forms, novel techniques and materials, and meticulous concern for interior arrangement and detail.

He immersed himself in every aspect of domestic life and design, exploring all its subtleties and sensitivities. His considerable output of bespoke and fitted furniture was characterised by the same search for order, efficiency and stylish ease in even the most mundane details of everyday living. His horticultural knowledge and command of landscape was equally impressive, as much care being lavished on the settings of his houses as on the buildings themselves. The diversity of results testifies to Gwynne’s continuing inventiveness, the listed properties of the late Fifities and Sixties particularly illustrating his ability to approach each commission from first principles according to client and site.

Thus The Firs, Hampstead, is placed at the edge of its plot with a fan-shaped plan to maximise the garden prospect; Past Field, Henley-on-Thames, overlooking a sweeping valley, adopts a wing form with deep rooflines to unify and dramatise its single-storey mass on the hillside; two adjacent houses in Beechworth Close, Hampstead, though undertaken as separate projects, are conceived as a pair and planned concentrically as square and rhomboid pavilions to overcome a northerly orientation and take best advantage of some fine existing trees. In the case of The Homewood itself, the development and aesthetic evolution of the gardens continued over the whole 60 years of his occupation.

Patrick Gwynne was reticent, with impeccable manners and refined patrician tastes. He shared the pleasures of The Homewood with a wide circle of friends and visitors; the house was built for entertaining. His deep understanding of architecture and nature was leavened by dry humour that overlaid a steely resolve. Despite increasing frailty in his later years he retained his professional authority and engagement. He was an architect to his fingertips. On what proved to be the last day of his life he talked with a friend about his latest house project, its materials and window details, its exact position in the landscape and a possible planting theme.

His career had entirely bypassed the harsh world of public sector practice and the fractious political debates that characterised mainline postwar British architecture and so damaged its popular reputation. Gwynne’s work showed a different face of Modernism — humane, considerate, generous, enjoyable. Although nominated for the 2003 Royal Gold Medal, Gwynne was insufficiently recognised in his lifetime because of his unassuming personality and the private pattern of his practice.

When the National Trust opens The Homewood and its wonderful gardens to the public, as it hopes to next year, his unique contribution will take its rightful place in the pantheon of English Modernism.

Patrick Gwynne, architect, was born on March 24, 1913. He died on May 3, 2003, aged 90.