Staying on as a troop leader as older men were drafted for World War II, Clarke was also a student at Loughborough then started his Diploma in Architecture at the University of Leicester.
After the War, he returned to Leicester to complete his diploma and then enrolled at Kings College, University of Durham to become one of Brian Hackett's first three students to study landscape design.
In 1951, Clarke was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a Smith Mundt grant to attend Harvard University's School of Design then under the leadership of Walter Chambers and Hideo Sasaki.
[7] Clarke is one of the last surviving faculty members appointed by the founding dean, Henry L. Kamphoefner, of the North Carolina State University School (now College) of Design.
His early endoscopic camera investigations, and three-dimensional model box studies with students steadily became a key aspect of spatial form evaluation methodology.
A seminal work entitled Design and Development Guide for Palmetto Dunes, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina was published in the mid-1960s.
His professional work includes early community college planning in North Carolina and Virginia, and prototype enclosed mall projects in Charlotte, San Antonio, Pittsburgh, Louisville, and Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Lewis Clarke Associates designed the first master plans for the North Carolina Zoological Park, the Fayetteville Street Mall in Raleigh, the Research Triangle Institute, and the Western Electric campus in Greensboro.