John Francis Charlewood Turner was born in 1927 in London and died in 2023. He took a Degree at the Architectural Association in London and then lived in Peru from 1957 until 1965, working for Peruvian government housing agencies, contributing to their programmes for community action and self-help housing in villages and urban squatter settlements. From 1965 to 1973 he lived in Massachusettes, USA and was an associate with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He returned to London in 1973 and worked at the AA in the Developmental Planning Unit.
He was known for his work on informal self-help housing and neighbourhood building and his work on housing in the 1960s and 1970s has seen him described as the most influential post-war writer on housing in the developing world and as a "principal architect" in United Nations and World Bank policies on self-help urban assistance to developing countries.