It was his own force of character and his persuasive ability to argue his case with absolute clarity and conviction that ensured the department's survival, and provided him with the opportunity to demonstrate that design is not just a craft skill but a knowledge-based discipline in its own right.
[4] His father, Leonard Castella Archer (1898–1983), was a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Scots Guards and his mother, Ivy Hilda Hulett (1897-1974), was a dressmaker and a trained amateur artist.
During his schooldays, at Henry Thornton Grammar School, he wanted to be a painter, but he was academically bright and not allowed to continue with art beyond fifteen.
Archer returned in the summer of 1962 and, with a small multi-disciplinary team, identified four urgent design problems: a receptacle for soiled dressings, a means of reducing incorrect dispensing of medicines to ward patients, the need for a standard design for hospital beds, and a way to prevent smoke control doors being routinely propped open.
Archer was appointed to a Working Party, and in due course won a contract for a standard specification and a prototype design.
After widespread consultation, evidence gathering through direct observations, and extensive field trials using mock-ups and test devices, the specification was adopted by the Kings Fund and became a British Standard; a successful prototype was also developed by Kenneth Agnew at the college for a commercial bed manufacturer.
[10][11] A photocopied version of his 1968 doctoral dissertation, The Structure of Design Processes,[12] was published by the National Technical Information Service of the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1969.
As they marched daily into the college's Senior Common Room they represented quite a large body of people, and were not entirely welcomed by staff from other departments.
Archer's own lectures ranged widely across the philosophy of science, ethics, aesthetics, economics, innovation, measurement, and value theory, and were delivered with directness and enthusiasm.
From his belief that design was just as important an academic topic as the arts, the humanities and the sciences, Archer was instrumental in the move to see it taught as part of the school curriculum.
In 1984, Jocelyn Stevens was appointed as Rector of the Royal College of Art, and he peremptorily closed the Department of Design Research.
Though approaching retirement age, his knowledge of the workings of the college and his academic credibility placed him in great demand, and Stevens thought nothing of contacting him at any time of day or night for advice.
In March 2004, a dinner was held at the Royal College of Art organised by the Society at which he was presented with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
[15] Archer himself, though frail, made a typically forceful and eloquent acceptance speech in which he acknowledged the contributions of his many co-workers, and contrasted the skills of decision making and advocacy which typify design, with those of inquiry and analysis which are essential in research.
They had one daughter, Miranda, who trained as an architect before becoming a high school teacher in design technology – the very subject that her father had done so much to see established in secondary education.