The Welsh School of Architecture 1920-2008: a History

The Welsh School of Architecture 1920-2008: a History

Ch r i s to p h er Pow el l

Welsh School of Architecture Cardiff University Bute Building, King Edward VII Ave. Cardiff CF10 3NB UK 2009 Copyright Š Printer: INKA Designer: Janice Coyle ISBN: 978-1-899895-41-0 printed on FSC certiďŹ ed paper Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material.

The publishers apologise for any inadvertent omissions.

Front endpaper: upper, the School in 1997-1998 photographed outside the former Glamorgan County Hall (WSA); lower, the School in 1946 photographed outside the Bute Building. (SWIAJ) Back endpaper: the Bute Building c.1940-50. (WSA)

The Welsh S chool of Architec ture 1920 -20 08: a His tor y

Christop her Powell

Wel sh S c ho o l o f Arc hi te c t ur e, Ca r di f f U n i ver sit y

Contents

Foreword

i

Preface

ii

1. EMERGENCE: The Nineteen Twenties

1

2. THE STAR IS RISEN: The Nineteen Thirties

15

3. CONSTRAINT AMID RENEWAL: The Nineteen Forties and Fifties

29

4. UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT: The Nineteen Sixties and Seventies

39

5. LOOSENING UP: The Earlier Nineteen Eighties

53

6. MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION: The Later Nineteen Eighties and Nineties

61

7. PUSHING THE PROFILE: The Turn of the Century

75

8. INTERNATIONAL AMBITIONS: The Twenty-First Century

87

AFTERWORD

101

APPENDICES: Chronology of Important Events Teaching Staff A Note on Sources

105 107 111

INDEX

113

FOREWORD

Nation-building It is a delight to write this foreword to Christopher Powell’s history of the Welsh School of Architecture, not least because he plots so graphically the changes and controversies surrounding those three words in the institution’s name over the ninety years of its life. The vision is quoted early on with a plea by Tom Ellis, Liberal Nationalist MP for Meirionnydd for a school of architecture in Wales. It had not been established long however before the familiar refrain was heard ‘it is in every sense a national institution….not merely a Cardiff institution.’

Suitably for a School of Architecture it had a home, well-located in a fine-looking building overlooking Cathays Park, though its host institution’s name and function was to change many times during its history as a home of architectural teaching from Cardiff Technical College all the way to autonomous University. The growth and development of the forms of that teaching is also well documented here, as well as the range of students and strong individual characters who have led the school, each making a very distinctive contribution to its ethos.

A one-time crusade for using indigenous material and styles is now followed by global concerns for the making of a liveable city- and country-scape through sustainable construction. The passion of those leading the architectural vision has been strongly expressed, if in different ways, over the years documented on these pages.

One of the formidable Heads of the School, a man of great passions, Dewi-Prys Thomas summoned me in the seventies to his country home in the mountains above Dolgellau where I had to solemnly promise him as the then MP for Meirionnydd that I would support the cause of Welsh architecture. Thirty years later his successors Malcolm Parry and Phil Jones helped strengthen the resolve of enough Assembly Members that to vote to build anything less than the original Richard Rogers Partnership design on Cardiff Bay would have been a betrayal of our architectural heritage. Arguably, without the existence of the Welsh School of Architecture there would have been no consciousness of such a tradition.

Y Gwir Anrh yr Arglwydd Elis-Thomas AC, Llywydd The Rt Hon the Lord Elis-Thomas AM, Presiding Officer

i

PREFACE

Why this history? The answer is that it is on a subject which has enjoyed success and made a positive impact on many people over a human life span. That it has also gathered much goodwill along the way has become clear while writing about it. All this seems to me to make the Welsh School of Architecture worth understanding better. A history as celebration is implied, for there has been much to celebrate. But celebratory offi cial histories are known to have their limits. One is that they record, in Vernon Bogdanor’s words, ‘only successes in a world in which everything always turns out for the best’. We know that things are just not like that, and we also know today that there are dangers in artificially enhancing a reputation. It risks making people complacent or leaving readers liking a subject less rather than more. So I have aimed to celebrate what was worth celebrating while not overlooking the ‘warts and all’.

How to approach the history of an organization like a school of architecture? Wags will reply ‘with difficulty’. Should it be approached as if a sort of sentient being, moving by stages from birth to adolescence and on to maturity, a biographical treatment?

Or should it be as more nearly a creature and plaything of allpowerful Heads who directed it at will (a top-down view)? Might it be the reverse of this, the sum of behaviour of all staff and students (a bottom-up view)? Instead, is it best seen as an outcome of imposed external forces, or maybe as an engine to generate ideas, or make architects? Again, it could be a framework on which anecdotes are hung, a source of entertainment. Equally, it could be an impenetrable terrain awaiting a map. Sidestepping opportunities for academic agonizing, it is, of course, all of these and more.

We each imagine our own different Welsh School of Architecture.

For one person it is the frenetic atmosphere of studios before hand-in, for another (maybe less convivially) it is staff meetings and crits. For others it may be Summer Exhibition opening day, all sunshine and best behaviour, or long drowsy lectures, or the scene of a personal computer breakthrough (or breakdown).

One of my tasks has been to try to link these different schools, to make them one. Experience and standpoint count in what we think the School is, or was. My own standpoint has the strength and weakness of being an insider. Strength, because insiders have first-hand experience to draw on. Weakness, because insiders may be blind to the big picture, finding trouble with the wood and the trees. A recent study of a different institution earned a review like this: ‘one thing you won’t find…is any comprehensive or interesting theme: the problem is that [the author of the study]

ii

has for a very long time been an insider’. Whether the same applies here, readers of this history will judge for themselves. As well as being an insider, my viewpoint as author will have been coloured by my being an architect who became interested in organizations to do with architecture, their economic and business histories.

This history of a public collective enterprise inevitably leans heavily on the assistance of very many people. Their help was essential; it was also a source of pleasure. Few authors can have been so fortunate as I have been in benefiting from such goodwill towards their subject. To all who have helped, and they are very many, I offer my thanks. In particular I am grateful to Professor Phillip Jones for suggesting the idea of a history and for his strong support, free from editorial interference, throughout its gestation. Although it seems unfair to name a few from among so many, special mention must be made of Jo Anson for proofreading, Pat O’Sullivan, Malcolm Parry, and Richard Silverman for invaluable discussions, Janice Coyle for sympathetic handling of design and organisation, Susan Morgans for sleuthing and other services, and the following colleagues, alumni and helpers: Lucy Burrows, Phil Coffey, Rhys Llwyd Davies, Wayne Forster, Wendy Garvey, David Grech, Mike Harries, Sylvia Harris, Huw Jenkins, Sam Kendon, Peter Lewis, Sarah Nicholas, John Phillips, Sarah Phillips, Andrew Roberts, Bill Roberts, Adam Sharr, Greg Slater, John Sutherland, Bob Tranter, Jonathan Vining and Kate Yoell. Theirs was a great part of the effort put into this history. Mine remains the blame for any inaccuracies.

iii

Chapter 1 EMERGENCE: The Nineteen Twenties

‘Sound, vigorous and useful’ In the beginning: one room, one lecturer and eight students. The past, they say, is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

Differently, no doubt, and on a smaller scale; this pioneering band of architectural hopefuls were all who gathered for the birth of the school of architecture on 20 March 1920. They were a consequence of long debate about architectural education which had taken place in Wales and throughout Britain.

The usual architectural training of the time was by articled pupillage (a sort of apprenticeship with a practising architect), but this was under mounting pressure. In Wales as early as 1896 an MP, Thomas Ellis, pleaded eloquently in a ‘nobly conceived speech’ at University College Bangor for a school of architecture to be set up in Wales. To promote ‘buildings worthy of the beautiful hills and fair valleys of Wales’ he posed a wish list which is still relevant. He wanted a ‘national and characteristic Welsh style’ and resources to be economized by use of local materials. He also stressed a need for architects to explain and justify their designs. His ideas came to little at the time, although a body called the Welsh Housing and Development Association did go on to advocate something similar. No doubt the South Wales Institute of Architects (SWIA) and its progressive members T Alwyn Lloyd and Percy Thomas were active in lobbying for a school. An entity known as the Cardiff Architectural Design Club, associated with the SWIA, originated a Welsh Atelier. Also a school of architecture and town planning was proposed by the Council of University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in 1917. It noted that evening classes to prepare for RIBA examinations had been held before the war at technical colleges in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. The new scheme called for a three year course followed by two years in an office and further attendance at college to prepare a thesis.

Although Senate thought a new department of architecture was ‘a desirable future development’, it noted ominously that the needs of existing departments were ‘most urgent’. Three years later the Times Educational Supplement condemned University College’s lack of interest as ‘for many years a matter of sincere regret’.

Eventually the necessary impetus to found a school came in the upheaval following the First World War. The armistice brought a fragile post-war economic boom turning quickly to bust.

1

Confidence and crisis became strangely mixed; in 1919 the RIBA felt able to lift its fee scale from five to six per cent of cost of works, meanwhile national house-building unit costs first doubled and then plunged. A devastating war was still less than 18 months past and the demand for building, and architects, was fluctuating violently.

Against this turbulent background, architectural education was in ferment. Old-style pupillage was beleaguered and the arts and crafts approach, said to be mired in ‘trades,’ was in thrall to the Beaux Arts tradition. The handful of existing schools such as the Architectural Association and Liverpool were about to be joined by new ones in Aberdeen, Bristol, Birmingham, Newcastle and other centres.

One of those centres, of course, was Cardiff. There the University continued seemingly indifferent to the idea of a school of architecture. The Cardiff School, when it opened, was decidedly a child of troubled times. Troubled, but not entirely gloomy. Regional commercial and civic confidence had grown strong in Victorian and Edwardian times and had yet to be undermined by the depression.

So it was that an expanding city Technical College under ambitious principal Charles Cole, with an imposing new building in Cathays Park, stepped in to become the institutional hero of the moment.

Shouldering the financial risk, the College resolved to found a school of architecture. Without delay they advertised for a head of department.

William Purchon, first Head of School.

(Western Mail)

2

Chapter 1

The man chosen was destined to place his stamp firmly and lastingly on the character of the School. Interviewed in December 1919, he was described as an ardent housing reformer and advocate of beautifying towns and cities, noted for his lucidity and plain speaking. William Purchon MA ARIBA was born in Hull in 1879, articled to an architect there, and studied at Battersea Polytechnic and the Royal Academy. He worked for the Admiralty Works Department in London for eight years. At the age of 28 in 1907 he became lecturer in charge of a new Department of Architecture at Sheffield University. There in 1914 his students gained two distinctions out of five given in the UK. One of them was CH Aslin, later Hertfordshire County Architect, responsible for the celebrated post-war Hertfordshire schools. Purchon organised many UK and French study trips for students and published on the architecture he encountered there. During the First World War there were few students and he became architect to Sheffield steelmaker Firth’s where he designed laboratories, canteens and the like. Institutional connections were a strength of his and they included membership of the RIBA Board of Architectural Education (useful when setting up a new school), the National Town Planning Council and the Town Planning Association. An arts and crafts sympathiser, his deep and long-lasting interest in housing was highly topical in the time of ‘homes fit for heroes’. He gave many lectures to architects and the general public, stirring debate about housing

and planning reform. He also wrote prolifically: the Welsh School’s present-day reputation for following the half-joking academic exhortation ‘publish or perish’ dates from the very beginning.

Purchon had a wry, laconic sense of humour and a practical, wideranging and quietly self-deprecatory outlook. Lecturing to army units in France, Belgium and Germany at the end of the First World War he remarked ‘why their sufferings were to be added to in this way I never discovered’.

Now aged 40, Purchon faced the opportunity of his life in setting up a new department (his second) in a go-ahead college in an architecturally acclaimed civic centre. Here he could promote his profession and garden city ideals in a place where they had already begun to be tried. Taking the new appointment, he told the Architects Journal cautiously that his ambition was to make the ‘young Welsh school a sound, vigorous and useful one’. In the event, appropriate words.

People: sparse but spirited The School in its 1920s infancy was, in a sense, the sum of the people who belonged to it. Who were they and what were they like? To modern eyes their striking feature was their sparseness: the eight students on the first day grew moderately to a total of 38 (full-time and part-time) the following year. In 1924 there were 18 full-timers, 19 part-timers and another nine at an evening atelier. After four more years the numbers reached 31 full-timers and 29 part-timers. Growth in percentage terms had been healthy enough, but even so it was equivalent to only about six full-timers in each year, tiny by today’s standards. This had social implications, making anonymity unlikely and ensuring that all knew each other’s identity, personality and work. The chance of developing a sense of belonging to the School was high, if for no other reason than that one’s absence would have been conspicuous.

‘…helping to arouse among the people of Wales a keener interest in architecture and the allied arts and crafts’.

(William Purchon)

As with students, so with staff, who were also few and far between.

Purchon worked alone for the first year before an assistant was appointed (the College was rather reluctant it seems). His name was Richard Winder, from Oldham and freshly qualified with first class honours from Manchester. His annual salary was £300, compared with Purchon who luxuriated with £500 (a narrower difference than its equivalent between Head and assistant today).

Another assistant, Eric Page, was present by late 1923, possibly part-time, having qualified the previous year. He left after about a year and was replaced by Lewis John who, having qualified with first class honours from Liverpool in 1922, was destined to stay at the School for some time to come. These, the earliest staff, were helped by practitioners such as local eminences T Alwyn Lloyd and Percy Thomas. The latter had designed the Bute building (although that name only came much later).

3

Pomp and circumstance: annual prizegiving and exhibition 1930, attended by SWIA and civic dignatories.

Lord Mayor seated second from right, Alwyn Lloyd standing third from right, William Purchon standing extreme right.

(Western Mail)

Students had to be at least 16 years old and to have passed either a range of recognised exams or the School’s own entrance exam. This included a language other than English, maths, higher maths or physics or chemistry, history, geography and English composition. At first a specially shortened version of the course was available for ex-servicemen; the age structure of early student intakes is now unknown. Course fees were higher than for other departments in the College and for arts faculties in the University of Wales. This seems not to have prevented quite varied social backgrounds among the earliest students. They included at least one ex-coalminer, a local architect’s son and a woman who spent what was to become known as gap time in Paris between leaving high school and starting higher education.

The School aimed to attract students living in Wales and from the beginning people came from a wide area of the Principality.

In 1925 there were students from Cardiff, Merthyr, Newport, Rhondda and from further afield in Abergavenny, Aberystwyth, Tenby, Welshpool and elsewhere.

Among the very first students to finish their third year in 1923 were K Atkins, L Munro, VL Nash, W Oakley and prizewinner BW Thomas. It is to Miss Atkins that credit goes as the first woman student of architecture in Wales. At a time when only three women had joined the RIBA in 20 years, she seems to have decided not to go beyond third year at the School; emergence of a Welsh School qualified woman architect would have to wait another few years.

Of the other students in the pioneer cohort, L Munro went on to a career with historic buildings, becoming senior investigator for the Royal Commission for Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire from 1928 and later gaining an MBE. VL Nash became a principal in private practice in Chichester, W Oakley went to Belfast, and BW Thomas earned the distinction in 1926 of being the first student of the School to reach RIBA membership.

The total to do so by 1929 reached 18, a figure which underlines the smallness of the School.

4

Chapter 1

Small, no doubt, but not lacking spirit. One example was fourth year student Olwen Price who starred in the local press in 1929.

Among ‘Women of Today’ she it was who was said to typify the ‘…women architects of exceptional brilliance’ coming from the School. She was the prize-winning designer of an infants’ school, in competition with no fewer than five male students. She was also the first woman student to go beyond third year, two earlier students (one was Miss Atkins) having left after year three to work for Cardiff architects. Nationally, it was said that women were finding architecture attractive as a career, but it was admitted that there could be difficulties finding employment due vaguely to ‘matters of prejudice’. Olwen Price, readers were assured, had ‘…not a trace of the blue-stocking about her’. She was a ‘fair, happy-looking girl with…pretty, wavy hair and jolly sense of humour and tremendous keenness for her work’. After gap time overseas and three years as a student she gained office experience in London. She told her interviewer about the position of women in her profession: there was but one solitary woman RIBA member at the turn of the century, growing in her own time to about 40 of them. Olwen Price later worked at the Department of Education in central London.

Members of the second student cohort, entering in 1921, were AV Banks, HA Barton (both of whom gravitated to Surrey, the latter as lieutenant colonel in Camberley) and JB Wride (q.v.). Others included H Bull and AC Light (q.v.), a Yorkshireman who left Cardiff after third year for University College London where he gained a first. Also at the School in the mid-1920s were CJ Bartlett (later at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, London), FV Honeywell (later in Londonderry), AE Jewell (later at a Westmoreland local authority), IFB Richards (later at the Ministry of Education, Belfast), CL Bugler (later in Birmingham), FK Aitkin (assistant architect to the Sudan government in Khartoum from 1930 before becoming a principal in private practice in Fitzroy Square, London), CAE Thatcher (later in Hindhead, Surrey) and EB Taylor (later in Wimbledon). These early examples show how the School promoted geographical mobility among its students, and also employment in public authorities. One of the most enterprising students at the time or, indeed, any time was David Williams. Starting work in a colliery at 14, he entered the School in the first year it opened. He then worked night shifts as a miner at the Standard Colliery, Ynyshir, Rhondda, about 15 miles north of Cardiff, while doubling as a part-time student. He successfully withstood this most punishing routine and in due course became a full-time student. He won School draughtsmanship and design prizes, as well as an award at the 1923 National Eisteddfod in North Wales. Completing the course in 1925 he took a job as assistant to the Glamorgan County Architect and then three years later as Chief Assistant Architect at Essex County Council. During a House of Commons debate on the Architects (Registration) Bill, Williams was named as an example of ‘the grit of a young miner’.

Grit indeed.

5

‘[Purchon’s] contagious enthusiasm for architecture’.

David Williams and his like belonged to a School which was far more formal than it was by the twenty-first century. Men in studio customarily wore collar and tie and loose-fitting draughting smock.

Despite the familiarity found among small numbers, there was likely to have been a sense of hierarchy between the extremes of first year novice and grizzled veteran who had endured to fi fth year (perhaps with earlier war service). Similarly in relations with staff where respect for age and position was expected on the one side and given (at least face to face) on the other. A student of the 1940s has recalled how he was expected to stand formally beside his drawing display during reviews and remain silent unless spoken to by staff.

(Alwyn Lloyd)

Within what was, to modern eyes, a rule-bound social climate there were times when conventions could be temporarily suspended. From the early days a School of Architecture Club arranged sports and social events, led by the annual dance. Said to be an ‘energetic association’ by 1924, the Club also organized visits and lectures, some given by Club members. At these events there were opportunities to rub shoulders with practising architects on something like equal terms. The SWIA held its own meetings at the School and sometimes various civic dignitaries also attended. City officials customarily went to prizegivings and exhibitions, as when Miss Atkins, the pioneer woman student, presented a bouquet to the Lady Mayoress in 1922. At annual dances the reserved relations between students and staff might be relaxed for the evening and Purchon seems to have been happy to play his part in this. Thus, more rules, but less remoteness than was to become the pattern later when School and institutions were bigger.

Friends and others in the wider world The people belonging to the School largely determined its character, but beyond the sum of their social relations there was interaction with the wider world. This was all-important in the exercise of power and influence and the building of reputation.

The position of the School in Cardiff Technical College was straightforward enough as one of a number of departments.

They would have competed with one another for limited College resources of staff, accommodation and so on (as with any multidepartmental organization). At the same time departments also depended on each other to provide service teaching and they benefited (or not) from the wider reputation which collectively they earned.

If relations with the College were straightforward, the same could not yet be said about those with the University. The award of degrees had been a hope in the School from the beginning. A few months after opening it was said that ‘it is probable that in due

6

Chapter 1

time the department will be brought into close relation with the University College’, but progress was agonizingly slow. Three years on it was said that a scheme had been ‘agreed to’. So far, so good, but the signifi cant words were those that followed, that ‘the means of bringing this scheme into action are being considered’. This was to take an unconscionable time: after another fi ve years had passed there were little more than hopes that the School would be recognized by the University.

Relations between the School and the profession were altogether more positive and (not difficult) faster moving. The SWIA had a School advisory committee and there was frequent teaching contact with practising architects. Sure signs of good relations between School and SWIA were that the Institute placed its library on permanent loan to the School and that it awarded student prizes. At public exhibitions and prizegiving ceremonies Purchon was usually accompanied by SWIA leaders, often the ubiquitous T Alwyn Lloyd and Percy Thomas.

Relations with RIBA headquarters seem to have been equally sound and supportive. RIBA recognition was given remarkably quickly to the first student cohort which completed third year in 1923. Full recognition for fi fth year followed in 1928, making the School one of only four in the UK thus favoured. Many bigger schools elsewhere went unrecognized, moving Alwyn Lloyd to remark that the School had ‘created a record in the annals of architectural education’ by gaining recognition so quickly. The rate of progress prompted a celebratory, if not triumphalist, letter to The Times from the Earl of Plymouth and other luminaries in 1928. Their encomium referred to great hopes at the outset of the School which had since been ‘far surpassed by actual achievement’. Not to be outdone the President of the RIBA, Sir Walter Tapper, down for the SWIA annual dinner, spoke of ‘one of the finest schools of architecture in the country’. The acceleration of Purchon’s nimble creation from a standing start was some achievement.

‘[Rather than] concentration on palatial buildings… we might spend rather more time on subjects of a domestic or business or a civic character and on possible sites…’

(William Purchon)

Purchon’s educational ways Turning from plaudits to the hard educational slog which earned them, a starting point is the national context and Purchon’s initial aims. The rise of the School coincided with active promotion of the profession and growing university and college involvement in architectural education. Topics for a key international RIBA education conference in 1924 included relations between education and offi ces, and connections with professional bodies, both of which were associated with the shift from pupillage to full-time courses. Other topics aired at the conference, to which Purchon actively contributed, were teaching methods (a hardy perennial) and research and postgraduate work (more talked about than done at that early date).

7

Right, Public Hall for Cardiff of 1924: student drawings show typical attention to shadow effects.

(Western Mail)

Lower, fine draughting for fine detailing: 1924 work by WO Oakley, a student in the first cohort to pass year three.

(Architects Journal)

8

Chapter 1

Purchon set out his view of architectural education in a series of articles in The Builder in 1924, raising questions and suggesting priorities as much as stating prescriptive views. He stressed that education should be life-long and that general education could usefully run alongside technical training. He compared training in offices and schools, in which he supported variety rather than uniformity. He sought balance between art and science, and systematic order in the way knowledge was acquired, moving from simple to complicated. Condemning dogmatic teaching, he asked whether there should be design projects from the very beginning of a course or whether to wait until students had a technical understanding. History teaching should involve sketching and inspecting actual buildings as well as reading the literature, a hands-on approach. Purchon struck a jarring note for modern architects when he wrote that there was need for early familiarity with Renaissance buildings in order to guide design project work (precedents before principles; no sign yet of the modern movement).

Construction teaching should be integrated with design; working drawings were important, as were full-sized details, laboratory work, and visits to materials producers and sites. Structures teaching was difficult as students could struggle with calculations and their relevance. ‘Sanitation’ teaching embraced lighting, heating and ventilation as well as drainage; it was sometimes ‘looked down upon as an excessively utilitarian subject, but it is clearly of very considerable importance’. Teaching of specification, professional practice and the Building Acts should take place in senior years. On the other hand teaching draughtsmanship was to be spread widely, beginning with geometry and architectural ornament and going on to outdoor sketching, perspective and measured drawings of standing buildings. Elaborate renderings of complete designs (so characteristic of the Beaux Arts tradition) could be overdone and simplicity was needed. At that time drawings were customarily on cartridge paper in ink or pencil and coloured wash. There was efficient presentation on single sheets, cut off from site context and with stylistic exactitude. Moving to design teaching, Purchon suggested that theory of design should be studied in all five years and there should be many quick sketch designs and large scale details. Recommended sources included Howard Robertson, Geoffrey Scott and Trystan Edwards. Leading design themes included: the expression of function of the building, composition of facades, massing, unity of design, and scale. In design as in related subjects, Purchon’s view was more commonsensical than visionary, recognising a danger of ‘unnecessary verbosity’ and need for the subject to be ‘cleared of padding and undigested philosophy’.

In devising the Cardiff course Purchon set out his approach and intentions in an opening address. Unsurprisingly he strongly favoured systematic full-time education over inherently chancy pupillage. At the same time he wanted educational freedom for students and to avoid forcing them all through the same mould: no

9

Heavyweight classical: design for students union building contains billiard room, music room, library, restaurant and lounges.

N.D. Ayers, year three prizewinner 1929-30.

(The Builder)

‘slave-like devotion to a rigid set of principles’. Guidance was to be found in ‘good modern work’ as well as past masterpieces, with tradition ‘a good servant, but a poor master’. He foresaw Cardiff students benefiting from UK study visits and laboratory tests on building materials, lectures on town planning and acoustics and also more traditional subjects. Again he stressed that draughtsmanship should be used as a means to an end and not an end in itself. He aimed for fully literate, balanced professionals, practical and guided by broad principles rather than narrow rules and rote learning.

They were the aims of a mildly progressive, pragmatic and broadlybased educationalist.

After four years the School had settled down to provide ‘an excellent combination of literacy, technical and scientific studies [and] sound, well-balanced, systematic training’ which sought ‘to harmonize the claims of utility with those of beauty’. Harmony, perhaps, although there is an impression of more stress on utility than beauty; an impression maybe deliberately fostered for the benefit of practical souls running the Technical College or seeking waterproof architectural assistants.

The first year curriculum covered history, the classical orders, perspective, sciagraphy and construction. A particular enthusiasm of Purchon was a general reading course which included works by modern writers outside architecture. Second year brought the first small design projects and also more history, construction and structures. Designs included an entrance to a Georgian house, a pair of cottages, a garden pavilion and a shop front. There were also studies of the chemistry of materials, laboratory courses

10

Chapter 1

on mechanics and materials testing run by other College departments. In third year there were lectures on modern architecture (probably meaning ‘recent’ rather than ‘modern movement’) and planning, as well as bigger design projects, one with working drawings. Designs were for a library, a pump house at a spa, a swimming pool, a crematorium, and a public hall seating 2,000. Studies of construction, materials and sanitation also proceeded. The fourth and fifth years, with an intervening six months in an architect’s office, contained more design projects and working drawings. There were also studies of steel and reinforced concrete, heating, lighting, ventilation, specification, contracts and professional practice, life drawing and civic design.

This long list was augmented with visits to sites, workshops, brickworks and cement works; vacations brought little respite with more sketching and measuring visits which now extended to France and Italy.

There were weekly tests in memory drawing and, from 1927, when two floors were added to the North Road wing, newly-constructed studios in which to do them. The Welsh National Museum lectured on stone and timber and the College department of art gave courses on modelling and drawing. Fortnightly one-day short designs, sometimes combining two or more years of students, added to a well-packed course. Assessment looks to have been thorough and frequent, with many examinations. In 1929 first and second year students faced seven papers at the end of each of three terms; others years had slightly fewer. To modern eyes there seems to have been daunting emphasis on technical ‘how to do it’ and draughtsmanship, and little about building users or time for reflection. In this, the Cardiff course was probably in line with others of its time.

A declared aim was for students to acquire ‘necessary knowledge and develop the necessary ability to…practise [and] have had their imagination stimulated and their thirst for exact knowledge and their enthusiasm aroused’. There were widening aspirations to spread the architectural message well beyond the School. Purchon pursued this ambition through prolific public lectures, articles, reviews and news in local and national newspapers and the professional press.

His enthusiasm for architecture enlivened topics in town planning, architectural history and rural preservation. A novelty in 1929 was his wireless broadcast from Cardiff on architectural education (it would remain a novelty even today).

In every sense a national institution The close of the first decade brought what the Western Mail termed ‘something of a gala day’. Looking back, the School had achieved a quick take-off so that after two years The Builder found Cardiff work exhibited at a national RIBA conference that:

11

‘A credit to the Principality’: JB Wride’s ‘Memorial to a Composer’ of 1929.

(Architects Journal)

Rome Scholar JB Wride.

(Architects Journal)

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Chapter 1

…shows considerable thoroughness and greater refinement in colour than normal…designs [are] more fully worked out…work of the various students shows greater individuality than is sometimes the case…Sets of working drawings are excellent…first year work [showed] much refinement, neatness and accuracy.

At the annual prizegiving a year later Percy Thomas spoke of ‘great credit’ and, mysteriously, of ‘…a tendency to do too much’ (not always a problem with students). This bright beginning had soon been boosted by early RIBA recognition and before long the South Wales Echo could write of ‘one of the finest architectural departments in Great Britain…both splendidly equipped and capably supervised’. The Builder judged it ‘in every sense a national institution…not merely a Cardiff institution’. Underlying these outpourings was the notable success of prizewinner JB Wride, newly qualified and now working with his father at Phillips and Wride of Cardiff (designers of two local cinemas). He had won the 1929 RIBA Rome Scholarship: ‘the greatest honour open to students of architecture’. This achievement was the latest and greatest of many awards which he had won, being hailed by the local press as a national triumph and a credit to the Principality. As Rome Scholar, Wride had succeeded against fierce national competition in designing a massive building group, a memorial to a composer, with a 3,000 seat auditorium, three smaller halls, museum, library, studios, hostels, restaurants and more. His architectural style was a clipped classical one with strong symmetry. The Architects Journal had ‘rarely seen finer penmanship’ despite Purchon’s lukewarm views about masterpieces of draughting. The great achievement was celebrated by a luncheon attended by the College Principal among many others, at which Wride had praise heaped upon him.

In the understated style typical of the School he responded to the toast ‘very briefly,’ and was followed by acclamation.

Wride’s triumph was followed by another success in the form of the RIBA Archibald Dawnay Scholarship. This was won by JP Ward to complete what was called ‘the very cream of architectural scholarships’. At this pinnacle of success for the young Welsh School of Architecture, prizes were given at a ceremony attended by the Lord Mayor of Cardiff and the President of SWIA. The great day ended with a ‘smoking concert’ held at the Dormie Café, Cardiff, at which one Fred Stibbs organised a programme of music and two sketches were presented by the Rhiwbina Players. By now Purchon (who lived in Rhiwbina Garden Village) might reasonably feel that he had spent his time in Cardiff to good effect. The School was firmly established, the better to face what WH Auden called the ‘low dishonest decade’ of the 1930s.

13

Chapter 2 THE STAR IS RISEN: The Nineteen Thirties

Bad times and good In its first decade the School was fortunate to grow up in generally expansionary times. Building activity and need for architects had stabilized and then grown buoyant. Now, the new decade brought depression, felt as damagingly in South Wales as anywhere in the UK. The short-term prospects of the architectural profession sank in the early 1930s although a novel development was the rising long-term influence of the RIBA and attempts to consolidate the profession through registration acts. By 1936 there was once again talk in Cardiff of better job prospects for young architects, many in local authorities, and soon there was a ‘definite shortage of well-trained men’. The Cardiff School was by now one of ten fully recognized UK schools, with another nine recognized only up to third year. Nationally, entrants to the profession from outside schools of architecture (articled pupils taking RIBA external exams) still outnumbered those going through the schools, causing Purchon to assert stoutly that a school education was the ‘finest method’. Finest, yes, but costly at a time when jobs were uncertain; school students were something of an elite.

The regional professional scene had some life, with prestige from a President of the RIBA, Percy Thomas, chosen from the SWIA. The then-still-unfolding architectural and planning achievement of Cardiff Civic Centre (partly Thomas’ work) was widely admired.

There was local debate about creating a post of Cardiff city architect, controversy over major works such as a new GWR railway station and vocal concern about developers’ despoliation of the Welsh countryside at a time before there was much planning control. A Cardiff Civic Society had just been set up to agitate and coax, with Purchon helping to run it. While Wales lacked a distinctive indigenous architectural style, the Principality was showing vigorous leadership with fine new civic buildings in Cardiff, Swansea and Newport. For an architectural student the times were stimulating, but with unemployment never far away, risky. There were both sticks and carrots to encourage academic achievement.

School versus University At ten years old the School still had little to show for its negotiations for university recognition. In 1930 University College Principal JF Rees pronounced positively on the subject, but it was a personal

15

Prizewinner: J.P. Ward’s fourth year Religious and Social Centre c.1932.

(The Builder)

16

Chapter 2

rather than official view. The Architects Journal chipped in helpfully with the opinion that the School, having ‘quite deservedly won a place among the leading schools of the country’, should now be connected with the University. Principal Rees saw ‘no difficulty in realizing [the School’s] aims’ and was determined, so far as it lay in his power, to assist in realizing them. But actions did not match words and a year later the best the Technical College could do was ‘persist in their endeavours to secure recognition’. After another eighteen months, in 1931, a mildly optimistic (if bureaucratic) message came from the University Court: ‘the committee expressed pleasure that the academic board approved the suggestion that the School of Architecture…should be recognised’. This did nothing to prevent two more years passing before a scheme was submitted for setting up a faculty of architecture and civic design. Ominously word came that ‘several further formalities [had] still to be gone through’. Byzantine manoeuvrings (or plain inertia) seem to have prevailed without noticeable progress. After another two years the agonizing seesaw of hope and despair took yet another turn with the guarded and less than encouraging news that ‘the crux of the matter has not been reached and unless some change of feeling takes place further protracted discussions are likely to ensue’. No such change of feeling seems to have been forthcoming.

Yet another year on, in 1936, that loyal friend of the School, Percy Thomas opined that the School was one of the most successful in the whole country and that a degree course was ‘likely to be arranged’.

The saga continued in May 1937 with the Technical College deciding ‘to recommend a scheme linking-up the degree scheme of the University with the School of Architecture and the School of Building into one whole’. It was galling that the Technical College Pharmacy Department now managed to agree a way for university degrees to be awarded, but not yet architecture. In the following July The Times at last reported the seemingly impossible, that the University Court had approved draft regulations for degree of Bachelor in Architecture. The ‘new degree represented the end of a long effort to bring the Welsh School of Architecture…within the University scheme of things’. A long effort indeed. The proposal required students to spend first year at any of the University Colleges of Wales, then five years at the Technical College before sitting degree examinations. Once running, the scheme would enhance the appeal of the School and discourage its third year students from moving to a university school to gain a degree. But not quite yet. It was not until 1939 that the Privy Council approved the plan and a new faculty of architecture was set up, possibly the first in Great Britain. After two long decades of effort, Purchon’s view of the process is unrecorded. It is probably just as well.

Aims and deeds The life of the School showed many obvious continuities, but also a few changes. They included continued growth, RIBA recognition for professional practice examinations in 1931 and upward extension of the central block of the building in 1936. Purchon’s educational aims remained broadly unchanged, being stated in 1931 as ‘a high all-round standard in design, construction and work of a more literary type’ rather than specialization. The cautious central ideas were balance between the parts of the course and the ‘great value of tradition’, while over-elaborate draughtsmanship was again deprecated. The general reading course enthusiastically urged works by such authors as HG Wells, Galsworthy and Belloc.

First year students were required to read six books during the session and write essays on two of them under examination.

The Builder noted approvingly that the School aimed at all-round development by a well-balanced curriculum aided by ‘excellently equipped studios, lecture rooms and library’.

Student numbers climbed healthily from 42 full-timers in 1936 to 61 in 1939, plus 15 part-timers. By then there were five full-time members of staff (as well as part-timers) and five studios. A job as library and studio attendant aged 18-19 at a weekly wage of 27/- to 31/- (£1.35 to £1.55) was advertised in 1937. While growth was no doubt welcome, the Cardiff contribution in the UK context remained slender. There were believed to be about 1,000 architectural students in English schools in 1936, plus another 300 in Scottish schools, and about 40 in the sole Welsh school (a total of 136 were women). Purchon used these figures to good effect.

A tower for the depression: W.J. Davies’ 1933 Design for a Pantheon.

(The Builder)

17

Neo-Georgian prizewinner: John Bishop’s strongly symmetrical secondary school design of 1931 is innocent of site context.

(The Builder)

He pointed out that the 1,000 English students had between them won a total of seven leading awards (a ratio of one award per 143 students), the Scots had won three awards (1: 100), while the Welsh, also with three awards, had by far the highest per capita achievement with a ratio of 1: 13. In this light there was no doubt that the Cardiff School was punching well above its weight in academic honours.

Success stemmed more from traditional educational values than from pioneering new ideas. Architectural modernism was becoming increasingly accepted in UK schools through the 1930s in the face of an entrenched classical tradition. Crinson and Lubbock (Architecture: Art or Profession?, 1994) noted that this was so by 1932 among most students and some staff at the AA School where the classical orders stopped being studied in 1937 (1936 in Liverpool). In Cardiff modernism was accepted more cautiously, as traced through reports of student schemes at public exhibitions.

The change in design approach must have given rise to much heat as well as light; what survives is only the shadow of a few of the projects, without memory of underlying controversy. An example of a traditional student project dating from 1931 was JW Bishop’s Eisteddfod prize-winning rural secondary school, a vast neoGeorgian building on an ‘E’ shaped symmetrical plan. Three years later a fifth year scheme for Cardiff aerodrome displayed distinctly modernist visual devices, but the plan was still symmetrical in the

18

Chapter 2

classical way. The School exhibition where this hybrid scheme was displayed attracted 250 visitors in one day. One was the Lord Mayor, evidence of the regard in which the School was held and its place in public life. GL Price, another Eisteddfod prize-winner of the following year, designed an ambitious headquarters for the youth movement of Wales, with hindsight an uneasy echo of events then unfolding in Germany. Also in 1935 a resolutely modernist design appeared for a girls’ boarding school by HJW Lewis (q.v.).

This precocious student also gained first prize in a competition with his design of an uncompromisingly modern house. A year or two earlier Lewis, with fellow student DW Roberts (q.v.) had opened a joint discussion between students and SWIA members on functionalism and architecture. A less serious design project of 1936 was a design for street decorations for the planned coronation of King Edward VIII, said to combine unity, harmony and dignity (in the event, not qualities fitting for an abdication). A prize for the work went to 19 year old part-time student AJ (Alex) Gordon who later took over Alwyn Lloyd’s practice and went on to devise the long life/low energy/loose fit precursor to modern sustainability, as well as becoming an RIBA President.

Lecturers and lectured The quality of student life as experienced in the 1930s is now elusive, but it seems hardly to have been impoverished by the economic gloom which preceded world war. Admittedly there had been what Purchon called a period of difficulty in the early 1930s, but by 1935 students were all satisfactorily placed with jobs. There were six each who completed third year and fi fth year in that session. Earlier in the decade it had been boasted that students not only came ‘from all parts of this country, but even from as far away as the Malay States’; the tone of the place was becoming quite cosmopolitan. Overseas travel was more common than might be supposed by a modern, wealthier, airborne readership: for example FK Aitkin spent six months as student in a New York office and a party of 14 students and three staff spent two weeks in Mussolini’s Italy in 1937 visiting Milan, Florence, Rome and Venice. Nearer home and in the depths of the depression 30 students and two staff visited London for lunch at the Architectural Association and to see the BBC headquarters building, Curtis Green’s Dorchester Hotel, Holden’s London Passenger Transport Board building and other attractions. On the occasion of the Munich crisis in 1938 students had contrasting visits to Windsor Castle, Aberthaw cement works and Liverpool and Bristol schools of architecture.

Visits to other schools often hinged on sports: the first of many rugby matches against Bristol was said in 1932 to be ‘both open and fast’. Cardiff won 12-6. At Technical College sports the School was said to excel. The annual dance loomed large in

19

Studio scene 1938: fourth and fifth year students with staff Chessor Matthew (extreme left) and David M Jones (front row second left).

(WSA)

student experience and went from strength to strength. In 1935 160 people enjoyed the delights of the ‘tastefully decorated’ hall and the next year 260 people admired the decorative theme ‘Gone Naval’ while competing for dance prizes. The 1937 theme was ‘In the Chinese Style’ and in 1938 no fewer than 350 people watched student Joan Treatt present Mrs Purchon with a fl oral bouquet (a well and truly defunct ritual in today’s student events). Student social life was not all rugby and bouquets: joint discussions with professionals in the SWIA were said to be highly appreciated and useful as well as pleasant functions. One held at the Jade Court Café in 1937 discussed the ideal system of architectural education and another debated the motion that ‘teaching is the last resort of the incompetent’. Purchon supported the motion and the result was a tie. A paternal tone to the organization is surmised from Purchon’s endearing practice of keeping press cuttings about students’ weddings and suchlike, as well as their academic and career achievements.

Amid moments of frivolity, the School continued to achieve academic excellence. A Miss AM Wride (younger sister of the Rome Scholar?) won prizes in first and third years. HJ Whitfi eld (‘Whit’) Lewis of Chepstow, he of modernist tendencies, achieved a distinction in 1933 and went on to post-war eminence as a leading housing architect at the London County Council

20

Chapter 2

where he was responsible for the fi rst point block in Britain, the ten storey Acroydon Estate, in 1950-3. Later he became Chief Architect of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.

HEA Scard of Milford Haven won the RIBA Archibald Dawnay Scholarship in 1934 and added an RIBA Silver Medal in 1936. The following year JR Sheridan Shedden excelled himself in fi fth year and in due course went on via Harlow New Town to become City Architect of Birmingham. Another Dawnay Scholarship followed for LWD Wall, later Borough Architect of Newport.

Also in 1936, David W Roberts won the RIBA Soane Medallion for his design of a national centre of fi lm records and research, leading to work in local authorities and Newcastle University before gaining an enviable reputation in practice in Cambridge.

Women students continued to be attracted to the School although they remained fairly scarce elsewhere in architecture.

It was believed that as late as 1937 there was only one woman qualifi ed architect working in Cardiff (Miss Wride at Glamorgan County Council) and only an estimated one in ten UK architectural students were women. The Northern Polytechnic School, London, had no more than two women architectural students in total before the Second World War. The proportion of women at the Cardiff School, at 14 per cent, was slightly higher than the national average; the Architects Journal declared

Upper, preparing for the public: students hanging drawings for summer exhibition 1939.

(News Chronicle)

Lower, flower girl: Joan Treatt presented a bouquet at 1938 annual dance.

(Cardiff Times)

21

Studio pin up: undated scene shows sensible shoes and collars and ties.

(WSA)

William Purchon in studio: this scene looks to be set up to show Cardiff women students.

(News Chronicle)

22

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unblushingly in 1939 that ‘at the Welsh School of Architecture T-square glamour looms large’. About the same time several national dailies carried the story that more women than ever were taking the Cardiff course, with the Misses Soams, Roberts, Morgan, Bird and Culley cited as examples. The national press had another spasm of excitement when Joan Treatt (she of the bouquet) was put under the spotlight: ‘an attractive girl with wavy red-gold hair direct blue eyes and a delightful smile’. She lived in Penylan, had just completed her fi fth year and had an ambition to work in London (the blitz was still a year away).

So it was with women students, but not for a long time yet among staff, who remained exclusively male. A succession of junior instructors began to be appointed, people finishing fifth year and staying on for one session. An early example was FG (‘Lyn’) Allen, in first year in 1929, and a junior instructor in 1933 before going to Leicestershire County Council and then returning to Cardiff. A new assistant lecturer in 1934 was AC Light, already noted as a very early Cardiff student. From Cardiff he was to become Head of Hull School in 1942 and a controversial Professor of Design at Auckland University School, New Zealand in 1947. Light replaced A MacLean at Cardiff, whose leaving present was a tea service and pair of bookends (fashions for leaving presents change, like everything else). The next staff change came two years later in 1936 with the appointment of assistant lecturer David M Jones.

Having studied at Cardiff and Liverpool from 1927, he seems not to have stayed long as lecturer but joined the Office of Works where he climbed to become Chief Architect of the Ministry of Public Building and Works Welsh Region. At the end of his career he returned once again to the School for some 1970s part-time appearances. Chessor Matthew joined in 1936 as a junior instructor and later as a lecturer. Two more assistant lecturers, George Quilliam and Richard Hartley, were appointed in 1938 to complete a staff group of Purchon, John and Matthew, and make a fair balance of experience and youth on the eve of war.

Contingencies arising Declaration of war in September 1939 did not at first deflect the School from its well-established course. Even the annual dance went ahead as usual in November with decorations of a ‘strikingly pretty Italian garden, gay with flowered trellis and orange and white striped awnings’. An exhibition of student schemes followed with the organisers drily remarking ‘notwithstanding the prevailing conditions’. Familiar times lingered on as late as April 1940 when Mary Morgan won the RIBA Bannister Fletcher Silver Medal. Then, several weeks later that world was extinguished with the fall of France.

23

By the summer vacation of 1940 many students had joined the armed forces (the total of UK architectural students had roughly halved). The School was faced by the threat of declining standards of those who remained. Purchon’s view was already clear: ‘it is sometimes suggested that the scientific attainments of students of architecture are not all that they might be, and that their ability to express themselves in simple, straightforward English is in many cases inadequate’. Amid growing problems it was steadfastly asserted in late 1940 that ‘despite present difficulties the Welsh School of Architecture is carrying on as usual’. Adjustments were made, and the hardy annual dance still managed to attract 280 people. Late that year (with the Battle of Britain scarcely finished) Purchon spoke of the need for post-war planning and reconstruction.

Joint meetings of students and SWIA continued as before, with one on War Damage held at the Park Hotel and another on the Architect and Post-War Reconstruction. Undeterred by threat of imminent invasion, student design projects replanning freshly-bombed districts of Cardiff were publicly exhibited. Such were some of the roots of post-war social and architectural idealism.

‘Not aiming at excessive specialization, but rather at a high all round standard in design, construction, and work of a more literary type’.

(The Builder)

24

Chapter 2

The war settled into a long slog so that by autumn 1942 there were shortages of books, drawing instruments, drawing boards and much else. Military conscription left very few students in fourth or fifth years, but this was compensated (perhaps unexpectedly) by growth of first year entry. The net effect was that total student numbers in the School did not change markedly from their pre-war level. It was expected that the School would double in size after the war when the reconstruction activity already being discussed would become a reality. Meanwhile staff were scarce because of the claims of military service coupled with uncompetitive pay levels. A temporary assistant lecturer post was advertised in 1942 at an annual salary of £300, the same as two decades earlier. At that time the staff were Purchon, John and Quilliam, together with the two new faces of LB Starling and former Cardiff student William Phillips.

Near the half way low point of the war, on 2 December 1942, a meeting of the Town and Country Planning Association was arranged to take place at Cardiff City Hall. William Purchon, as a speaker, made his way from the School along King Edward VII Avenue. He gave his address to the Association and then collapsed. Before he could reach hospital he was dead. Aged 63, he had been approaching retirement and was looking forward, he said, to devoting himself to the literary pursuits he had long enjoyed. The School had lost its chief creator and architect, in two senses of the word, the man more than any other behind its character and success.

Prizewinner’s design: RIBA Archibald Dawnay Scholar and Silver Medalist HEA Scard’s proposal for city shop c. 1935.

(The Builder)

Total oeuvre: exhibition of work done by one student during his five year course.

Student was Norman Thomas, son of Percy Thomas. University College Principal JF Rees (left) and William Purchon inspect the work in 1937.

(WSA)

25

Purchon’s achievement Purchon founded the School and headed it for 22 years: a quarter of its existence so far. What was his achievement and legacy? The first criterion must be the quality of education which he established.

Although only small, the School produced architects of national calibre, Whitfield Lewis, David Roberts and Alex Gordon among them. Equally evidently, the School produced far more than its share of national architectural award winners: Wride’s Rome Scholarship, Roberts’ Soane Medallion, the Dawnay Scholarships of Scard, Wall and Ward, and all the rest. Here was proof won in open competition that Purchon created a school tradition to be reckoned with: high achievement from small numbers. The evidence is that this was accomplished through educational tolerance and a cautious liberal attitude rather than through a single architectural vision enforced by dictat. Rather than one approved Welsh School style or way there was an acceptance that different individual approaches might be equally valid.

Draughting smocks for some: studio fashions, late 1930s style.

(S.W. Echo)

26

Chapter 2

Another key criterion of educational quality and arguably the supreme one is how well students were able to meet employers’ needs. Purchon’s practical and pragmatic approach to architecture and stress on achieving balance between its various parts suggest

that he was striving for employable students. His long-standing close involvement with practice, its institutions, problems and opportunities supports this view. The record of his students finding jobs (many in the nascent public sector) during that most depressed of decades show how well this aim was met. In doing so, he was carrying the educational war with non-school trainees to the enemy camp: the case for pupillage rested on employability.

Under Purchon, the School developed a distinctive character prominent in which was a close relation with SWIA. Close relations also existed with the RIBA. This helped the precocious early development of the School, with opportunities taken to keep it in the public eye by publicity in local, professional and national press. Another characteristic was in staff-student relations which were paternalistic by modern standards, but with an underlying human touch. The resulting sense of cohesive identity was reinforced by the isolation of the School in contrast to, say, the London schools. This sense of identity stopped short of cosiness or insularity. By good fortune or good judgement it coexisted with openness to external ideas and people as seen, for example, in the range of other schools from which Cardiff staff were recruited: little sign of nepotism.

‘…excellent feeling that always exists between [WSA] tutors and pupils’.

(Illustrated Carpenter and Builder)

Dancing to war: late 1930s festivities.

(S.W. Echo)

27

It would be misguided to expect perfection in any social institution (even in a study like this, written in part in celebration). The School had its limitations. No doubt one was the time taken to reach an agreement with the University. Arguably another was that small size constrained subject specialization. Then there was the issue of the extent of design creativity seen for example in the cautious adoption of the modern movement. Here there are dangers of misreading the past by taking an inappropriate modern standpoint (EP Thompson’s ‘enormous condescension of posterity’). Whether, for those times, creativity was emphasized enough must remain a matter of opinion. Were the practical means of achieving firmness and commodity, over-emphasized at the expense of achieving delight? Or was a measured practicality the right and responsible educational approach, especially when jobs were scarce? Whatever the answer, a practical and professional, rather than visionary, emphasis was stamped firmly on the School.

28

Chapter 2

Chapter 3 CONSTRAINT AMID RENEWAL: The Nineteen Forties and Fifties

War and peace A world war is not a good time to run a school of architecture.

Only the rather young, the rather old and the variously unfi t are available to learn and available to teach; the disruptions are frequent, materials scarce and travel difficult. Similarly with practice: in the absence of clients, bricks and timber, architects can only resort to visions and words and await better times.

Nevertheless the School carried on. The big gap left by William Purchon’s sudden death midway through the war was filled by an internal appointment. The new Head was to be Lewis John. Having joined the School nearly 20 years earlier, when he had been qualified for two years, his experience was deep, but architecturally-speaking narrow. He would have known and understood the place through and through: a specialized educationalist and safe pair of hands. In his task of keeping the School running, without standards slipping until times got better, he was helped by about four staff. In the last but one year of war there were about 45 students, of whom one in five were women.

The return of peace in summer 1945 hardly brought a return to business as usual. New faces in new numbers in the School were only the beginning: there were new ideas, political and social as well as architectural, and new attitudes, clamouring for fresh responses. Outside the School a new government embarked on sweeping change at a time when the war-weary and economicallyexhausted country was struggling to pay its way. In this time of austerity there were compensations for the architectural profession because the moment had come when debate about national reconstruction was matched by action. Bombed city centres and urgent housing and school building programmes clamoured for attention. After years in which new architecture could arise only on paper, it now slowly began to take tangible shapes. The resulting brave new world of new schools, new local authority housing estates and new towns was a golden age for official architecture. There was promise of plenty of new jobs for young architects in public authorities and in the private practices which had them as clients. This newly-buoyant national demand for architects’ services began to affect the means of supply, namely the schools of architecture.

29

The Cardiff School, like others, now experienced an uncomfortable two-way stretch arising from scarce resources on the one hand and high demand on the other. In Nicholas Bullock’s words the schools were ‘crammed with students, short of staff, shorter still of resources’. Demobilised servicemen whose architectural education had been interrupted by the war were eager to make up for lost time and could be hard to please. One opined in a 1945 RIBA Journal that staff were the ‘offscourings and unwanted products of a nation at war’. Old sweats were joined by numerous school leavers, some with idealistic expectations spurred by prospects of national reconstruction. Architecture was an attractive career choice. By 1946 there were well over 80 students in the School, double the figure two years previously, although a smaller proportion were women. Four years later there were 140 diploma students plus 24 studying for a degree. The ratio of nearly six to one diploma to degree showed that the latter was either unattractive or unaffordable.

‘There is no doubt that we as students learnt a lot from each other.

There was considerable camaraderie…and friendships formed then have stood the test of time. We learnt from one another through friendly criticism and ridicule, sometimes wrapped in a strong humour. It was this interaction which was a spur…’

(Graduate of 1957)

30

Chapter 3

Shortly after the war there were about eight members of staff, one of whom was Lyn Allen, returned to the School from decidedly unarchitectural war service in bomb disposal. He is remembered as thoughtful and gentle, although not a born communicator (which sometimes led to lecture-time pranks). Another staff member who returned after military service was Richard Hartley, known as ‘the Major’. He was later recalled as a popular personality responsible for teaching straightforward aspects of colour, services and acoustics. Recruitment and retention of staff became exceedingly difficult. In 1950 only five out of a complement of nine were in post: according to John ‘the very existence of the School is seriously endangered’. With student numbers increasing each year he feared the ‘probable early eclipse of the Welsh School’. An appeal to the University to close the salary gap between Technical College and University pay scales was rejected (lecturer scales were a meagre £300 - £660 and a more generous £550 - £1,100 respectively). The RIBA urged the University to take over the whole School, but it was understood that this move would be ‘fought tooth and nail by the City Council’.

Growth without and restraint within As the 1950s wore on national scarcities gradually eased and opportunities began to open. Periodic bonfires of government controls and derationing of consumer goods (and construction materials) raised prosperity and confidence and brought Premier Harold Macmillan’s celebrated claim that ‘you’ve never had it so good’. In this expansionary climate architects were able to add their ideas and expertise to national reconstruction. At one level the profession gained the ear of central government while at another level architects featured in journalism as the heroes of the day. Architects were attracting a fashionable popular identity,

usually male, with bow tie, dark-framed glasses and a pipe: a winning career image was in the making.

Locally, the Technical College began to lift from basic to more advanced subjects as struggles with the upheavals of war yielded to thoughts of expansion. A sign of change was the recasting in 1953 of Cardiff Technical College as the grander-sounding College of Technology and Commerce. Four years later institutional aspirations advanced again with the advent of the Welsh College of Advanced Technology, one of eight CATS in England and Wales.

Prestige was slowly gathering around the parent institution, but it was a long haul.

Home since the beginning: the Bute Building. Little has changed except incised lettering above columns and addition of sculpted red dragon and bollards. From a watercolour by an unknown artist c.1940-50.

(WSA)

The 1952 intake to the School was about 35 students, including three women. When the same cohort emerged in 1957 there were 28 diploma students, including two women, plus another seven (including one woman) who gained a degree under the scheme with University College. About one student in five chose, or was eligible for, this degree route rather than the diploma, suggesting its mildly rising popularity. The School continued to win national RIBA awards, although by this time their prestige seems to have been declining. DA Saxon’s 1957 Silver Medal, for the best work by a final year student in a recognized school, was the second to be won by Cardiff in three years. The following year FC (Clive) Johnson won it again (he was later to take control of

31

the Alex Gordon practice). In 1959 DIJ Evans and WB Palmer won the intermediate and final level RIBA Certifi cates of Merit respectively, and the Dawnay Scholarship went to CR Musson (later a successful archaeologist).

‘Chessor Matthew seemed to run the School’.

(Graduate of c.1953)

The School offered a quite conservative educational course, in terms of scope, structure and teaching methods broadly typical of its time. As Bullock has written, the pace of change in schools was leisurely, with teaching in arts and crafts or Beaux Arts manner and with explicitly modernist interests cohabiting with these older traditions. First year students studied the classical orders and throughout the course fine presentation skills were stressed. This entailed arcane draughtsmanship techniques such as elaborately stretching watercolour paper. At least one former student reflected that it gave rich opportunities to camouflage underlying design faults (encouraging ‘hard lines on soft ideas’).

Only late in the period in the UK, according to Blundell Jones did a switch begin to black and white pen and ink precise drawings for dyeline reproduction. A second year design project was a house with a pitched roof. Pitched, so as to give experience of traditional construction methods, doubtless to the dismay of ardent modernists keen to show their stylistic credentials by challenging orthodoxy by means of flat roofs. In the summer following third year there was a week of measured drawing carried out unsupervised in small groups on historic buildings. Students worked in architects’ offices during vacations although there seems to have been no designated period of office experience. In fourth year a major set of working drawings was required, painstakingly drawn in ink on linen, by then an obsolescent technique in architectural practice. Each year of students was educationally compartmented and without formal contact with the years above and below. The library was shared with other college departments and sited on the first floor at the front of the building. It held a modest collection, said (cynically or not) to have been used only lightly, mainly for superficial pillaging of recently published projects for design ideas worth cribbing. Some traditions change, others endure.

If the course was more cautious than progressive (gaining merit through comprehensiveness and thoroughness) at least it did not entirely lack variety. For instance in 1953 a party flew to Milan (the first airborne School visit?) at a cost of £10 each to embark on a month of Italian rail travel. Study visits in the UK were mostly to historic buildings and towns, appropriate for a course more guided by tradition than innovation. Visiting lecturers were quite few, but included Erno Goldfinger and, annually, a lecturer from the School of Art who taught modelling techniques and graphic design.

Outside ideas also came through the Double Elephant Club, named after the Imperial drawing paper size then in use. This student-run group met for architectural discussions in a now-lost city centre pub and attracted some practising architects and distinguished

32

Chapter 3

outside speakers. It was a chance to compare opinions and arguably to compensate for lack of strong intellectual stimulus at the School where practicalities mostly prevailed: a necessary touch of magic among the drains and structures. The Double Elephant Club was also a sign of students strongly committed to their subject, although hard-pressed modern students might add that it was also a sign of enough slack in the course to give time to participate. Further signs of outward-looking engagement were mixing with other departments in the College debating society and quite regular contact and rivalry with the Bristol school. Public exhibitions of student work still figured prominently, as in 1957 when the Lord Mayor of Cardiff opened a show of prize drawings in the assembly hall then on the ground floor of the building. It recalled events held in Purchon’s day 30 years or more earlier. A quite different event which looked firmly forward rather than backward was the 1960 inauguration of a course leading to a Diploma in Town Planning, the first venture to call on a measure of staff specialization.

Staff arrivals The town planning initiative, which would grow up in the 1960s to take on a separate life was Lyn Allen’s. Other senior staff, in addition to Head of Department Lewis John and Richard Hartley, included Chessor Matthew. He returned to the School after an active war and stayed until 1957 when he left to become Head

The School in wartime: Lewis John (front, fi fth from left) is the new Head in 1943.

(SWIAJ)

33

of the Dundee school. Recalled as a dominant personality who did not possess a lot of warmth, he ran fourth year and lectured in history and theory of design. It was his tough love style to memorably describe himself as being ‘a bastard, but the bastard who gets you through’. William Kretchmer arrived at the School in 1959, having qualified eight years earlier, and later became a Reader. More junior staff of the time included John Eynon, (q.v.) part-time from 1951 and later full-time and first year master (in the terminology of the time). He was a deeply-committed teacher who qualified at Cardiff in 1951 having been seriously wounded during the Normandy landings. He had practice connections with Alex Gordon and became a consultant specializing in historic building conservation. BE (‘Monty’) Minter, a Liverpool graduate of 1952, stayed several years at the School before moving to practice, latterly in Pembrokeshire. William Tecwyn Prytherch joined the staff at the same time as Minter, probably in the mid-1950s. Having also qualified at Liverpool, he returned northwards after a few years. Minter and Prytherch were remembered as bringing to second year a sense of youth and new ideas, implying that these were a welcome contrast.

Five other members of staff were new to the School in the 1950s, all having qualified within a few years of each other. Olbris Davies, who had studied at the School and qualified in 1949, took up a career-long interest in structures, a serious subject said to reflect his personality. Fred Thomas, who qualified in Liverpool in 1950 where he was a friend of Jim Stirling, had previously worked in New York. As lecturer he earned respect with his meticulously prepared work on materials and construction lectures. Kimball (Kim) Pollit, also qualified 1950, lectured in housing, having been

Lewis John appointee: Kim Pollit joined the School in the 1950s. Photo probably taken in 1970s.

(WSA)

34

Chapter 3

educated in Leeds. John Roberts qualified at Durham in 1954, joined the School in 1958 and developed the Project Office over much of his career. Leeds educated Donald H Jones joined in 1960, to lecture in structures. All five were to become mainstays at the School for many years.

Attitudes to scholarship and research may be gauged from Lewis John’s bleak advice to his lecturers to leave the School building at the end of term and not return until the vacation was over. A recollection from about this time reinforces the picture of a nowlost leisurely pace of life (at least for some). One Friday afternoon a clubbable lecturer, returning in a tired and emotional state from an extended lunch hour was caught out when the Head swapped the lecture schedule at short notice. Recovering from the initial shock, the befuddled hedonist gamely tried to deliver his lecture. Alas, nature took its customary course and clarity sank calamitously. Some well-built students (probably sympathetic to the cause) graciously assisted the incoherent academic back to his room. He later drove home, as was the style of the day, half a century or so ago.

‘An education devoid of any relationship with real buildings or the building process’.

(Graduate of c.1953)

Student experience Student social life of the time has been remembered by a prominent alumnus as suffused with drink, sport and jazz; there seems no reason to doubt this crisp characterization. As sportsmen, the students put up a reasonable showing with, at the least, a Welsh international table tennis player, a first fifteen Cardiff rugby player and others. Achievements in the other two named fields must await another chronicler; they will not lack material.

A likely sign of growing student group consciousness was the emergence of a male dress code. This was the School scarf and a duffel coat (black was favoured) below which distinctive exterior were sports jacket and plain trousers or possibly an old suit, together with a School tie. To dress up meant adding a coloured waistcoat to the ensemble. The comparative rarity of women students (or strong individualism) seems to have worked against an equivalent dress code for them.

An annual cycle of organized (or not so organized) events lent some structure to social activity. There were Saturday night dances, as well as the more elaborate annual affair held jointly with SWIA. University Rag Week brought a ritual of charity fundraising centred on building an architects’ float in the face of great rivalry with engineering students. There was a rag procession which required dressing up (or down) and various stunts among which was a fondness for kidnapping rag officials from other colleges. Sharing some of this anarchic spirit were student visits to places of architectural interest. According to folk memory these

35

‘always finished up in drunkenness’. Such were the highlights of the social calendar. At a more mundane level the daily hard graft of studio work was lightened by morning and afternoon refreshment from a tea trolley on the first fl oor landing. At these times the architects colonized the south stairs to fraternize with women students from the commerce department. There was a refectory at the north east corner of the fi rst fl oor, next to a student lounge equipped with arm chairs and, a hint of civilization, chess and table tennis.

‘…happenstance of having a few gregarious, mature and talented individuals who by their friendship and enthusiasm induced each member…to feel comfortable being a member of a social group.’

(Graduate of 1957)

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Chapter 3

Most, but not all, students continued to come from homes in Wales. Several members of the cohort entering in 1952 have spoken of their rural origins and of the initial impact of urban Cardiff. Some students were former articled pupils who switched their education to the School. Some found that they had picked up in the office as much, or more, technical knowledge than the staff. After fi nishing the course many students went on to distant places and to professional recognition and distinction. They included Alex Gordon, whose education had been interrupted by war, and Dale Owen who became a Fullbright Scholar, went to MIT, worked with Gropius and later came home to the Percy Thomas practice where he designed some prominent buildings, for example for the University at Aberystwyth. A few years later there followed PG Barton and OD Willmore who later founded the sizeable eponymous practice. Again, John Sutherland, an entrant of 1951, went on eventually to head the Unitec School of Architecture, Auckland, New Zealand. The 1952 cohort was a vintage intake which included Ceri Davies who retired as a Whitehall Under-Secretary having produced an influential report on health property management which had brought him into close contact with Number 10 and was debated in Parliament. WH (Bill) Roberts of the same cohort left for Pennsylvania and founded a US practice employing 250 people.

The same 1952 cohort held a reunion at the School in 2007, which made possible a simple career analysis of 66 per cent of the 35 students who completed in 1957. The place of first employment after leaving the School was private practice for 65 per cent of the 23 former students analysed. No fewer than seven of them went to offices of the Percy Thomas practice, mostly in Cardiff.

Another 26 per cent went to local authorities and nine per cent went overseas, one to Barcelona and another to Vancouver. At retirement, 30 per cent had spent most of their time in private practice, mostly in South Wales. Another 22 per cent spent most of their time in local authorities, again mostly locally. The careers of another 17 per cent were predominantly in public authorities (other than local authorities) such as central government, hospital board and academe. Another 26 per cent had spent their time mainly overseas, as widely as Nigeria, the Bahamas, Australia, North America, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

The same cohort also commented retrospectively on the quality of their architectural education. Their comments came from a more than usually motivated group of people some of whom, it must be said, were quite critical. How typical their experience was it is now difficult to say. They noted the persistence into the 1950s of outdated methods, together with a paucity of scientific and philosophical thought. Staff were generalists, without much access to specialized knowledge.

The briefs for design projects were described as being cursory and, reflecting the view of former articled pupils, examination papers sometimes contained false assumptions. In short, rigorous teaching was scarce, most particularly at Part 3 level, and the brighter students did not find much intellectual depth in the course. Teaching in Cardiff, as elsewhere, was poised between Gradgrind-like transfer of practical facts and skills, and an approach which demanded reasoning. This view resonates with events at the RIBA where would-be reformers struggled to bring about change. Relations between Cardiff students and staff remained by modern standards stiff and formal with students rarely addressing staff on first name terms or arguing back in crits. A disciplined and restrictive atmosphere pervaded the School, allegedly sharing features with secondary schools.

University rules of the mid-1940s required students to ‘refrain from loitering in the corridors and on the stairs’ and prohibited gambling within the College precincts. The unspoken aim of many was to get through the system rather than develop their full academic potential. More positively, students felt that they learned a very great deal from each other and had gained much strength from defending their own positions among their outspokenly critical peers. Lacking intellectual rigour or not, former students looked back on their student time with much warmth, recalling it as ‘great’ or ‘immense’ fun.

Mostly men: a scene of postwar austerity (and matching weather) in 1946.

Seated staff include Lyn Allen (fifth from left), Lewis John (seventh) and Richard Hartley (eighth).

(SWIAJ)

37

John on the cusp The era came to an end with the new decade. In October 1960 Lewis John retired as Head having served the School in various roles for all but four years of its entire existence, a career spanning 36 years. Latterly he was recalled affectionately as a ‘great debunker’ with a good sense of humour. While being the disciplinarian to be expected of a man of his time, he had warmth in his dealings with students. He was said to have handled with great tact the many ex-servicemen, some of whom had attained high military rank and had lived through the brutalities of war. It was John’s lot to be Head at what was probably the most difficult prolonged period in the life of the School. Merely getting by had been the challenge during the war and its long under-resourced aftermath.

As his Headship advanced, so the practice of architecture had changed, with growing implications for education. By the time he retired, the means for the School to respond to new needs, as well as sustain established standards, were at last becoming available.

The challenge facing John’s successor was quite different from that which John had confronted when he first became head. The sixties beckoned, with all that that implied.

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Chapter 4 UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT: The Nineteen Sixties and Seventies

The Welsh architect The middle years of the School were pre-eminently the story of a memorable Head. The man whose personality was synonymous with the School throughout the 1960s and 1970s was Dewi-Prys Thomas. He was a man palpably driven by two equal passions: a love of architecture and of Wales. In his own words ‘the image of Architecture and the image of Wales were married within my mind’. Under his direction the School evolved decisively from having the single function of teaching into having twin teaching and research functions. A further polarity of the period was that it was a time in which public esteem for architecture in the UK first peaked and then plunged into a trough.

Dewi (customarily thus, if not always to his face) brought to his appointment in 1960 an extensive academic experience at Liverpool where he had been a notably talented student 20 years earlier. His architectural perspective was the broad one of an historian, although he also practised on a small scale. Designing and teaching were interwoven with a lifelong involvement with the Welsh language and culture. Today he is most remembered as a personality who commanded respect and affection in equal amounts. His former students still speak warmly of how they felt individually valued both as people and as designers (even in potentially-bruising final reviews). He encouraged students to believe in themselves and fired them with the richness and importance of architecture. This last began with a letter sent to students entering the School which spoke of ‘devoting your life to architecture’. The formal lectures which would follow later are recalled as inspirational performances, no doubt influenced by his early theatrical experience and many radio and television performances.

Dewi Prys Thomas soon after his arrival. A characteristic cigarette is visible.

(J. Vining)

Dewi-Prys Thomas’ rare combination of qualities entered the School at a propitious time. In the early 1960s confidence and growth in society were rising along with their frequent accompaniment, architectural fortunes. Architects had all the work they could cope with (and more) and the RIBA was striving to update the profession to meet new conditions. Their publication of the candid Architect and His Office in 1962 set an agenda for reform. Architectural education was already in ferment following the seminal Oxford conference; student opinion was articulated nationally by the British Architectural Students Association (BASA) in which

39

Cardiff was well represented. Possibilities were being aired for course content and teaching methods to supersede the prevailing mix of Beaux Arts and arts and crafts traditions. In place of dustylooking studies of the classical orders and sciagraphy there was exhilarating talk of architectural science, sociology, cybernetics and industrialized building. Multidisciplinary education was being proposed, including a ‘National School for Environmental Studies’ suggested by the forward looking Alex Gordon in 1962. Here was the architectural counterpart of the white heat of technology famously promised by Harold Wilson in 1963. To this heady mix was added the official Robbins Report and the expansion of higher education which followed.

Academic overture As the new Head settled in to post he could look with satisfaction at the university status of the parent institution, the Welsh College of Advanced Technology (WCAT). The School was now one of seven in the UK to use the university clearing house student entry system. Less satisfactory was the 20 year old arrangement in which entrants could choose to spend either six years studying for a degree or five years for a diploma. Not many students were attracted to the cumbersome and time-consuming degree route which was not necessarily much help in career terms. Prolonging the time in education it could be a disincentive to choosing Cardiff if a degree was the aim. There were worries, too, that the higher entry standards demanded by the CAT compared with the old technical college would limit applications. Responding to these concerns a new five year course was negotiated which obviated the need for a first year in a University of Wales department prior to studying architecture at the School. After backing by veteran Percy Thomas (still helping the School after 40 years) and rising star of local practitioners Alex Gordon, the new degree course came into being in 1962.

Formal scene: intersection of south and east corridors.

Project Office left, School secretary office right, probably late 1970s.

(WSA)

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Chapter 4

This was by no means the only development instigated after DewiPrys Thomas’ arrival. With UK universities being expanded, the climate was set fair for fresh initiatives in Cardiff. One was to take forward the idea of architectural science, viewed as a distinct, but related field in parallel with architecture. Senior Lecturer Fred Thomas noted early on that development of technical and scientific aspects of the subject was the important trend in architectural education, with architectural science having been set up in Liverpool in the mid-1950s, followed by Sheffield and others. The initiative in Cardiff founded a major influence in the School, and beyond it, in the years ahead. At this time, too, the possibility arose of new accommodation for the growing School on a new site.

New ideas and activities needed new staff. Alan Lipman arrived from South Africa in 1963 and set about making a name in sociological research. The field bore promise of architectural applications; links were to be forged with social scientists in University College, namely with Charles Mercer and Bob Slater.

Another appointment was Malcolm Quantrill, a well-travelled author, teacher and critic who brought intellectual aspiration with him. In 1964 more new faces appeared: Vernon Barber, Jeremy Lowe and at about the same time Tom Markus and Lyn Moseley.

Markus, as Reader, strengthened emergent scientific skills in the School, as did Moseley who gained an early non-historical PhD in architecture. Lowe went on in due course to pioneer historical studies. Barber, a non-architect, taught graphic skills. Two more new staff were Stanley Cox in 1966 and John Manzeh Longbone at about the same time. Cox, coming to the School from his local architectural practice, began to establish himself through the RIBA as a national authority in the solemn complexities of contract and professional practice. Manzeh Longbone was connected with architectural science. Staff numbers were augmented yet further in the 1963-4 session by short-term appointments Jim Thomson from the USA and Klaus Brandstetter from Stuttgart. By 1968 some staff had moved on, William Kretchmer some time earlier, followed by Markus, Quantrill and Moseley. In that year the 14 fulltime staff were: Dewi-Prys Thomas Lyn Allen Vernon Barber Stanley Cox Olbris Davies John Eynon Richard Hartley

‘The Welsh School of Architecture, through its graduates, will quite inevitably contribute in the widest and deepest creative way to the changing domestic, industrial and civic patterns of Wales. The task here may be more difficult than elsewhere’.

(Dewi-Prys Thomas)

Don Jones Alan Lipman John Manzeh Longbone Jeremy Lowe Kim Pollit John Roberts Fred Thomas

A sense of advance in the School under its new Head was apparent in various ways, not always obvious from the quiet exterior. One was the growth to maturity of Lyn Allen’s brainchild, the town planning course. For reasons now unclear it was decided to launch this

41

Interior perspective: entrance for a holiday centre by BJ Roberts, year 4, 1959.

(SWIAJ)

High rise: student hall of residence tower by Neville Rees, year 4, 1962.

(SWIAJ)

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Chapter 4

as a fully-fledged separate department under Professor Anthony Goss in 1966, a rare example of an independent spin-off from the School. Another sign of advance was the ingenious shoehorning of mezzanine staff rooms over existing south studios, at Jeremy Lowe’s suggestion. This brought at least temporary relief to the accommodation shortage endured in the School for much of its existence. Fuller use of existing space became possible from 1968 when studios were routinely kept open until 9.00pm (whether due to growing user-friendliness or intensity of the course is unclear).

Left, early days: young BSc students hearing about small settlements from Bob Fowles (seated).

A course ascendant

(WSA)

(WSA)

Right, influence of Buckminster Fuller: structures lecturer Don Jones with polygonal shelter sometime in 1970s.

Applicants to the course in the late 1960s were asked for ‘a balanced education in the humanities and the sciences, together with a faculty for drawing and creative work’. This meant at least five General Certificate of Education (GCE) passes, including either maths or physics, with at least two at Advanced Level. A pass in art was highly desirable and a portfolio of work was required.

Having been accepted, what awaited students in the studios? A typical mid-sixties second year design project was an Outward Bound Centre in Snowdonia (sited in the Welsh heartland, it would have chimed well with the sentiments of the Head). Third year tackled a motel in St Mellons and a teacher training college in Caerleon. The previous third year worked on a Civic Trust style high street colour scheme for Cowbridge and a horticultural centre, and publicly exhibited their finished work in the town. It was the practice then and for long after to foster community links of this sort with local amenity groups. Fourth year students meanwhile were designing student halls of residence in Penylan, mostly highrise blocks in the fashion of the day. Then-current architectural priorities are also seen in the affiliations of visiting lecturers. In 1964 they included two makers of prefabricated housing systems, and architects from government research and development, the

43

Year one design: a wood turner’s studio at St Fagan’s Folk Museum, 1961. Described at the time as ‘in tune with the current classicist tendencies’, this design was by Robert Tranter, who later joined the staff.

(SWIAJ)

Sixties seaside slab: ‘A boatel and marina at Brixham’ is year five thesis design of JRH Price, 1962.

(SWIAJ)

44

Chapter 4

Civic Trust, and a new town. Four years later studio work in first year strongly featured the then-fashionable study of design method among analytic and communication studies. Second, third and fourth years centred on orthodox design projects and included plenty of production drawings (no longer called ‘working drawings’). Fourth year also included an urban design study carried out in student groups. Fifth year featured a traditional design thesis, including interior design and more working drawings (‘production drawings’ having not yet reached that far). Alternatively a written and illustrated report instead of a design was possible, but most students preferred drawings to words.

The written examination load (without which no account of the student experience can be complete) remained heavy by presentday standards. At the time when tumultuous students in Paris were preoccupied with les évenéments of 1968, their less excitable Cardiff counterparts faced examination ordeal by history and philosophy, design method, human studies, structures, environmental design and building services, materials and town planning. With differences like construction, architectural economics and professional practice, the list for the three ensuing student years was similar, with a lighter fifth year examination burden. In the sixties it was customary for design project submissions to be hung in the corridor for scrutiny by a group of senior staff who added in red pen to drawings either first mention, mention, commended, pass or fail. Although staff: student relations became less formal over time, academic gowns were worn into the 1970s.

‘…there are splendid plans afoot for the growth and expansion of the School. Here we have an awareness of keen responsibility similar to that at the Academy in Helsinki.

Both are national schools of architecture in capital cities and there are no other real schools of architecture in either country’.

(Malcolm Quantrill)

Life beyond the examinations continued. The Double Elephant Club was merged with the Students’ Club, apparently a retrenchment.

The list of speakers chosen in a typical early 1960s session points to ruling student interests: Elizabeth Layton (secretary to RIBA Board of Education), Derek Lovejoy (landscape architect), John Macarthy (sculptor) and Jim Stirling (then completing the Leicester Engineering block). At an annual dinner dance the guest of honour was the now-prominent alumnus HJ Whitfield Lewis. Among the students of the time who went on to gain recognition in their various ways were: an Iraqi, later prominent in OPEC; Dafydd Iwan, later a leading figure in Plaid Cwmru; Ivan Prys Edwards, later Director Urdd Gobaith Cymru; Colin James, later Oxford City Architect; Malcolm Parry, later Head of School; and Stan Sherrington, later Head of the South Bank School.

It had been remarked with regret in about 1960, with tongue firmly in cheek, that the intellectual level in the School approximated to a woodwork class in a secondary school: ‘nobody talks about architecture’. After the early years of Dewi-Prys Thomas’ Headship it was apparent that this was no longer so, if it ever had been.

Horizons had been raised and what was attempted had been both broadened and deepened. This was due partly to national higher

45

education expansion coinciding with growth and reform of the profession. But that was by no means all. Internal decisions proved to be the right decisions: promotion of architectural science and various kinds of research, stimulated by an openness to outsiders and external ideas. New staff appointments had greatly boosted the currency of scientifically-derived knowledge, and specialized architectural experience in the School.

Opportunities without and within The Welsh College of Advanced Technology was re-designated the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST) in 1967 and the Head became the first Professor of Architecture of the University of Wales. The session 1967-8 was the last under regulations leading to a degree after five years of study. Under new regulations a BSc was to be awarded after three years and a BArch after five years. Such changes consolidated the place of the School in the university system and enhanced its appeal to school leavers.

The changes also absorbed much staff time so that administration began to swell alongside teaching, a trend not destined to go away.

The future of the physical setting of the School, unchanged since the outset, now came into question. Abortive plans were made for a move from King Edward VII Avenue to North Road. Then in the early 1970s there was another proposal to rehouse UWIST on a new semi-rural campus 15 miles away at Llantarnam, near Cwmbran. This idea, too, was dropped in due course, as was a plan to move the School to a site off Colum Road near the railway.

A very different kind of move nearly arose in 1975 when fire accidentally broke out among the mezzanine staff rooms. For a while smoke billowed impressively from the roof, but firefighters did their stuff and damage was contained. Some of the sparse records underpinning this history are poignantly charred at the edges as testimony to what might have come to pass.

Another, less calamitous, aspect of accommodation was the restlessness of the growing architectural science group. It had come vigorously to life with the appointment of the colourful engineer Professor Patrick O’Sullivan from Newcastle-upon-Tyne University in 1970. The early years of the group were spent first in the Bute Building and then in a former house at 28 Park Place. Quick to benefit from a favourable intellectual and financial climate for his subject, O’Sullivan soon made headway. Five years after his arrival the value of funded architectural science research projects was well over £60,000. Early work included studies in building energy conservation and office working environment. Close international working links began to develop for the first time with, for example, visits to Venezuela and Denmark. The group moved from Park Place, first to nearby 24 St Andrews Crescent and then nearer the main School, in 20/22 North Road. O’Sullivan’s quick success

46

Chapter 4

in building up the group showed undoubted drive and neither was that all, for he showed an equal talent for bringing on younger people and forcing their development. He is remembered, among other things, for his idiosyncratic higher degree supervisions on trains travelling to London with his students alighting at Paddington and returning directly to Cardiff to resume their desk-bound studies. Don Alexander, a researcher who met his future wife on a research project in Abertridwr recalled O’Sullivan’s searching and often-repeated phrase in technical discussion: ‘show me where it says that’ and his remarkable ability to speak effectively to any group on any subject, aided only by his collection of six cartoons on slides.

Architectural science formed the centrepiece of new ventures set in motion by Dewi-Prys Thomas and in which he subsequently seldom interfered. Another prominent venture was Alan Lipman’s research in human studies. His sociological work gained much recognition as he moved from Reader to Personal Chair, but did not attract the numbers of researchers in O’Sullivan’s group.

The other research area to gain recognition was Jeremy Lowe’s painstaking work on industrial housing history.

Researchers in architectural science, human studies and history shared a belief in the value of linking their work with teaching.

Students benefited from current thinking and researchers arguably benefited from need to be both relevant and understood. The closely-kept connection between research and teaching was agreed to be highly worthwhile, but none claimed that it made for a restful life. When researchers of different outlooks and disciplines got together informally or in seminar, as they often did in Park Place, there were sparky exchanges. The respective claims of architectural science and human studies would be paraded and tested. From the resulting heat and light, the research gained

Kit for creatives: smart new adjustable parallel motion drawing boards in first year studio 1968.

(WSA)

47

rigour; likewise, no doubt, the participants. The ferment of ideas forged appropriate lasting academic and scientific standards and research practice for the School as a whole.

Allied more to professional architectural practice than to research was the School live Project Office. Effectively an architectural practice run within the School, it opened in 1970, initially with help from DM Jones (q.v.). Under John Roberts’ direction a small and changing team designed a range of buildings, some based on student concepts. By 1975 a sizeable list included Crown Offices at Carmarthen, a primary school at Brackla, Bridgend and a telecom building in Swansea. Many more such public sector projects were to follow. In 1976 the Project Office moved from the Park Place premises which they had shared with researchers from near the beginning back to the Bute Building (so named from 1979).

They occupied an office in the south east corner. A paucity of opportunities in which the valuable experience gained from live projects could be fully fed into teaching, or connected with research, was regretted by some.

Later D-PT years The national climate surrounding the School changed by stages between the end of the swinging sixties and the infamous winter of discontent of 1979. As oil crisis and inflation eroded earlier confidence, so architecture began to attract harsh public criticism instead of applause. There was a rethink in which simple faith in modernism yielded to a search for alternatives among vernacular revival, community architecture, ecology, post-modernism and the like. Architecturally speaking, the times were decidedly interesting if not actually bewildering.

Tectonic shifts in the appreciation and practice of architecture did not much affect the fundamentals of the course. Design method teaching remained prominent in first year which contained many short exercises, and now gave early experience of simple building design. As before, second and third years brought a series of design projects of progressively greater ambition, in which low cost housing and production drawings were a sizeable part. Lectures were quite numerous, with relief provided by group visits, summer live building projects (fun in the sun, though not without hazards) measured drawing exercises and short residential and day courses.

Architectural science teaching, with its long running exercise at St Fagans, became prominent through the course. Settings needing special facilities such as instruction about concrete, plumbing and building operations were supplied externally, for example by the Cement and Concrete Association. A highlight was group community studies in rural France, run by year tutor Mike Harries.

Fourth year students now worked in architects’ offices, with support from staff to check progress and offer guidance. Fifth

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Chapter 4

year, as before, offered a choice of traditional design thesis or written dissertation, although the latter continued to languish and eventually fell into disuse. Fifth year was followed by a further spell of practical experience before the Part 3 professional practice examination, at this time still comparatively simple, although becoming less so.

A distinctive feature of the course was that it extended over only four in-house years, in contrast to nearly all other UK architecture courses which lasted five years. In the late 1960s there was a view in RIBA circles that the length of courses might be cut without damage. The four year course had consequences. One was that, besides attracting some controversy, it exerted gentle pressure on all concerned: to do what other schools did, but in less time had the effect of concentrating the mind. A benefit was that the slackness often found in the fourth year of five year in-house courses was eliminated. The four year course was the more effective in terms of time and cost, although arguably it allowed fewer opportunities for reflection and consolidation. Another consequence of the shorter course was a need to advance third year students

Raising the roof: David Hamley with model of his Ely supermarket project in 1968.

(WSA)

49

strongly to compensate for the absence of an in-house fourth year. Again, the shorter course stimulated academic contact with offices throughout fourth year when students worked in practice.

On balance, the shorter course was tighter, more carefullystructured and with closer staff student contact. It did much to give a distinctive character to the School. It imposed on staff and students alike an imperative to clearly define and concentrate on the essence of their work, without waffle or padding. By leaving little room for superfluities or embellishments it made for a more bracing academic climate peopled allegedly only by the quick and the dead.

In with the (fairly) young Student numbers grew from the early 1960s, when those completing the course were in the low twenties, typically to reach 46 or 48 in years two and three by the late 1970s. By then about six or seven (13 – 14 per cent) were women. A few students in most years were Norwegians, a distinctive regular contingent present for some time.

Young staff arrivals were Cardiff graduates Malcolm Parry in 1968, after a spell in practice, and Robert Tranter the following year, having embarked on social science studies. They were followed in 1971 by Peter Lewis, a mathematician and acoustician who accompanied Pat O’Sullivan. EL (Les) Woolley joined the School from a sister department in UWIST, to teach sanitation and drainage. This he did with zeal, to the extent of dedicating a how-to-do-it text to his wife. MV (Mike) Harries, a former Cardiff student, moved from the Alex Gordon practice to the School in 1971, to run third year and construction lectures by day and his jazz band by night (he played trombone). The following year Christopher Powell arrived from central government research and development to become second year tutor and lecturer in economics. Next to arrive, in 1973 from Manchester, was RA (Bob) Fowles who long brought enthusiasm and greenery to the running of first year. Another figure of the 1970s was Ray Cole who was active in environmental research and teaching. David Leighton joined the School from practice in Chester at about the same time, first in the Project Offi ce and then on teaching staff with fourth year. Phillip Jones joined as a researcher in 1977, a figure who was eventually to make his mark on the School. By 1977 there were 20 full-time academic staff, about half of whom had been present for nine years or more. In the same interval two staff who were in the School before the war retired, Lyn Allen in 1976, followed by Richard Hartley a year later. Manzeh Longbone had also departed for the Huddersfi eld school. About two thirds of the 1977 complement of staff were educated outside Cardiff, an insurance against insularity. Their names were as follows:

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Chapter 4

Dew-Prys Thomas Vernon Barber Stanley Cox Olbris Davies John Eynon Robert Fowles Mike Harries Don Jones David Leighton Peter Lewis

Alan Lipman Jeremy Lowe Pat O’Sullivan Malcolm Parry Kim Pollit Christopher Powell Fred Thomas Bob Tranter John Roberts Les Woolley

Ending an era: retiring Head Dewi-Prys Thomas shakes hands with student Robert Firth (Later Head of Architecture, Capita Architecture).

Bearded figure in centre is Professor Alan Lipman.

(WSA)

Getting along together Memories of the two Dewi-Prys Thomas decades remain dominated by his character. Remarkable though it was, a balanced view must also account for his organizational achievements. An important accomplishment of his was to add to the teaching strength of the School. This he did by encouraging existing staff, bringing in new lecturers, and by his own example. A second and arguably greater achievement was to found a research community of appropriate ambition. When he first joined, research in schools of architecture (other than historical work) was rudimentary. Long before he left, the School had firmly established a national, and in some areas international, reputation for research. Neither was this acquired at the expense of sound teaching, for the one balanced and complemented the other, not easy to achieve.

51

Research was set up in the School in a way that architectural science took root early and burgeoned. Projects and funding were found and relevant results were delivered. The School provided a service which the world wanted and did so in ways that gave satisfaction.

In this, the times were propitious, with a new parent institution very keen to make a mark in scientific research, a subject impelled by national energy costs, and in which new computer techniques could be applied. The second main area of research, human studies, originated, spluttered and flared in its development, but ultimately did not flourish. Reasons for this disappointment included lack of funding and, despite early academic fashion for sociology in architecture, not much discernable influence on design. Human studies in Cardiff, as elsewhere under various guises, did not fulfil its early promise. The third main area of research, architectural history, remained mainly as individual scholarship. It certainly advanced in the School, but did not come to rival architectural science.

A major influence in promoting the capability and reputation of the School was its openness to external influences in critical times when expansion was possible. Suitable people were attracted and, equally important, absorbed along with their ideas. Staff already in place when the likes of Markus and Quantrill were appointed proved receptive rather than resistant to new influences. This successful transfer of ideas, the very lifeblood of an academic department, was repeated later with the appointment of O’Sullivan and others.

Here was a strength of the School: external influence was readily identified, absorbed and diffused. It held the benefi ts of continuity and stability while avoiding stagnation; growth and adaptation were fostered. The outcome was that the growing School remained a cohesive collective endeavour. If debate, and day-today running of the place, being by fallible humans, was not always attended by universal harmony, at least mutual respect prevailed.

This was so between the major potential divisions which bedevil university departments: researchers and teachers, sciences and humanities, and staff and students. The intellectual climate rooted in Purchon’s by then distant day, of liberal-minded tolerance of dissent, rather than adherence to a single approved party line, held pretty well. In all, it was the time when the School finally discarded its technical college origins and attained the full stature of being part of a university.

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Chapter 4

Chapter 5 LOOSENING UP: The Earlier Nineteen Eighties

In with the new An ailing Dewi-Prys Thomas retired in 1981: he was believed to be the longest in post of all 37 Heads of UK schools. His successor was John Eynon, universally known as ‘Jace’. This internal appointment was a surprise, coming as it did at a time when the initiatives of the previous Head were well bedded in and the time was right for fresh advances. The appointment of a person who had spent much of his life at the School, as both student and staff could easily have meant more business as usual. This proved not to be the case. John Eynon brought with him profound human concern for students, strongly tempered with the orthodox assumptions of his generation and profession. His management style owed something to his military experience overlain with a ready approachability. He was a man thoroughly dedicated to teaching who saw the architectural world through a traditional practitioner’s eyes. A concomitant was that he had little interest in research in a university department.

John Eynon (J. Vining)

The leading priority of the new Head was to open up and revitalise design teaching, which was felt to be moving towards the formulaic and dull. This blunting of the creative edge could be attributed to two causes, one being the approaching retirement of a group of lecturers who had joined 20 or more years earlier. The other cause was the general fall from grace of the modern movement. This had led to a widespread search for new design approaches which in turn had created a need for stimulus and freedom to experiment.

This was a big challenge at any time, now all the more so given an adverse public opinion of schools of architecture in general, with closures rumoured and real, as at Bristol.

Young men mostly Eynon’s way to stimulate design in the School was to bring in new staff with new ideas. More interested in people than abstract ideas or organization, he made new appointments in generous numbers.

New recruits were mostly young men who between them had a wide range of experience. There were eight of them, beginning with the arrival in 1982 of David Grech, a Nottingham graduate with practice experience. Richard Parnaby, a Liverpool graduate with North American experience (later a Head at the University of the West of England) and Richard Weston, a Manchester graduate with American and British experience followed in the same year.

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Staff line up: left to right, Fred Thomas, John Roberts, John Eynon, Kim Pollit, Olbris Davies, Bert Horwood (School Secretary). Probably on the occasion of a retirement c.1984. All had been present since Lewis John’s time.

(WSA)

The following year two Cardiff graduates arrived, John Carter and Simon Unwin. In 1984 three more arrivals were Adam Hardy, a Cambridge graduate with French and British experience, Bernard Keay, a structural engineer displaced by the Bristol closure, and David Singleton, a Cardiff graduate with Far Eastern and London experience. More new ideas were brought to the School by the short-term appointments of Visiting Fellows Piers Gough (1982 and 1984-5), Richard Reid (1986), Simo Paavilainen of Finland (1986) and New Zealander Peter Beavan. Another short-term appointment was Pauline Fowler who came from Toronto in 1985 to become the ďŹ rst woman full-time on staff (albeit short-term). Last, but not least in this infusion without precedent were two Design Professor appointments made in 1986. Professor Charles MacCallum brought varied experience, latterly from his Oxford-based practice, to part-time design tuition on the BSc course. Later he was to return northwards to head the Mackintosh School, Glasgow. Professor Ivor Richards came from work with Sir Leslie Martin, Cambridge, to bring new vitality to design in the BArch course.

These gains to the staff were balanced by retirements over the same period: Olbris Davies, Don Jones, Kim Pollit, Fred Thomas and Les Woolley. They were the long-serving bearers of much know-how, particularly in technical and practical subjects and their departure made an impact on the collective capability of the School. Youthful experiment, creativity and international experience took the ascendant, while mature, methodical, knowledge-based approaches faded. It was a turning point, a culture shift, in the School with visible outcomes in the design studio. These staff changes took

54

Chapter 5

place in a context in which there were totals of five Professors (Eynon, O’Sullivan, Lipman, MacCallum and Richards), 17 Senior Lecturers and Lecturers and ten researchers. Additionally there were support staff of eight administrators and four technicians.

Liberated learning Freedom from constraints and a measure of liberation from topdown control became a new keynote. Responsibility was devolved to design tutor and student levels in a reaction to the more centralized control exerted by the widely-respected previous Head.

An emerging more fluid BSc course, an echo of free 1960s attitudes, was reorganized under Mike Harries as Director of Studies. First year was followed by a Degree School which united second and third years. The Degree School contained four ‘studios’ in each term, each one based on the individual interests of a particular tutor.

Studio themes in 1984-5 included housing (‘surprise and delight’) by Visiting Fellow Piers Gough, Cardiff Docks (proposals for the Bay then being topical), building for tourism in Wales, an art gallery and a funeral home. In autumn and spring terms second and third year students worked separately, in summer they could be integrated.

Each student was expected to plot a personal educational path through the various options on offer. Studio work was central to this arrangement, even more so than usual, with technical teaching presented wherever possible in loosely-structured workshop format rather than lectures. A consequence was that integration or its lack between project work and lectures became a concern for an RIBA visiting board of 1984. The BArch course continued broadly unchanged, under the direction of Bob Tranter, with progression from BSc being automatic for honours degree students. Year four was spent in practice with some academic distance learning. Year five was mainly a design thesis and written Special Subject study with choice of topic.

‘Studio was quite dull, but the lectures were inspirational. They were terri c’.

(Graduate of 1984)

Upper, director of studies BSc: cheery lecturer Mike Harries and student Jane Lock Smith.

(J. Vining)

Lower, 1980s studio life: Wayne Forster (extreme right) would later return on staff. Foreground parallel motion drawing boards continue to give faithful service.

(J. Vining)

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Welsh National Film Theatre, Cardiff, Sharri Jamaladin, fifth year c.1986.

(WSA)

Near right, showroom for Stuart Crystal Ltd, Emlyn Cullen, second year.

(WSA)

Far right, final design project Rocca di Noale, Russell Jones, Fifth year. Exhibited at Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1986.

(WSA)

The Student Association (SAWSA) organized visits to such places as Glasgow, Newcastle and the Liverpool International Garden Festival. Students were active in the UWIST football league although the student chairman, Bruce Nicol, regretted that ‘sports seem difficult to arrange: there never seems to be as much time for architectural students’. This was, and remains, a consistent refrain and is no doubt based on bitter experience; architecture demands time. On the other hand there seems to have been enough of it to organize a disco in town as well as the annual ball.

And less official activities flourished as ever, like the unadvertised arrival of a kissagram ‘policewoman’ at an economics lecture, to the extreme embarrassment of a student (and the joy of his friends) faced with ‘arrest’ on his twenty-first birthday. SAWSA also published a magazine and regularly arranged staff-student panel meetings. Many student activities benefited from gently expanded student numbers, with intakes typically in the upper 50s or 60s, of whom around 20 – 30 per cent were women Overseas students also increased in numbers and nationalities, with a few years in which those from Far Eastern countries amounted to one in five students. This impressed a new lecturer who walked into a studio to find a group speaking Welsh in one corner, another group speaking Norwegian and a third speaking Chinese: English was nowhere to be heard.

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Tea and speeches: an occasion now forgotten, attended by (left to right) Bert Horwood (school secretary), Pat O’Sullivan, Jeremy Lowe, John Roberts, Alan Lipman, John Eynon, Kim Pollit, c.1984.

(WSA)

Corridor crit: familiar scene as student right, defends his scheme before a group.

(WSA)

Studio tuition: John Eynon (seated) and Richard Weston debate work by young BSc students, c.1983.

(WSA)

57

With advancing technology and burgeoning subject knowledge, the School depended more and more on special facilities for its effectiveness. The old chalk and talk days when education and research depended solely on the quality of people were receding.

People were of course still crucial, but they depended more on such services as the library. Here the School was fortunate to appoint Sylvia Harris in 1981, a librarian whose ready enthusiasm was backed jointly by John Eynon and the university library. She began improvements, for example making direct access to the main library on the floor below. By stages she oversaw the library as it was transformed into one of the most admired of its type in the country. Computing was another facility of fast-growing importance. By the early 1980s usage had reached the point where a modest computer room was needed. A room was allocated off the west corridor where, with a seminar room, it was the only outpost on the whole west wing occupied by the School. Similarly, much of the north wing except two lecture rooms was occupied by non-architectural departments. By the mid-1980s the School occupied 1490 square meters of the Bute Building, plus another 400 square meters elsewhere for architectural science. A premise of the course was the central importance of the design studios, but their physical reality and use did not fully match the aspiration.

Research in friction Alongside restless churn in teaching, research continued to make progress on its own path. By 1985, if not before, O’Sullivan could boast of one of the largest multidisciplinary research and development groups in any UK school of architecture. Research contracts amounted to £440,000 largely for work on predictive models and field experiments. Lipman’s parallel research in human studies was now directed to design issues in modern architecture, while Lowe continued his detailed historical studies.

The Project Office with John Roberts began some jobs as student projects which generated sketch designs for development into live buildings. A successful example was a second year project for a public library in Ely, Cardiff, which was taken forward by Mike Harries and Project Office assistants in 1985-6. Pevsner approvingly described the result as ‘a jolly little building…’ which reflected motifs of surrounding buildings as well as John Outramlike Post-Modernism. Other projects were a library and health centre in Cowbridge, primary schools in Penarth and Pontypool, an adult training centre in Newport, a museum for the Roman site at Caerleon and restoration of the sizeable historic house of Llancaiach Fawr, at Nelson, near Pontypridd. Many projects gave opportunities for fourth year students, one or two at a time, to gain office experience under guidance from deputy Alwyn Jones.

Less visible, but equally active were Stanley Cox’s professional practice work through the RIBA, and the setting up of a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) enterprise jointly with SWIA.

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Upper, student and project: graduate of 1984 Jonathan Vining with some of his work.

(J. Vining)

Left, art gallery, Cardiff, from J. Vining’s final design project 1984, exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1985.

(J. Vining)

The nature and spirit of research rested uneasily beside the emergent freer pattern of teaching which, in some respects, had moved nearer to art school practice. Friction between the different research interests and between research and teaching arose, not least between Head and architectural science research interests. Separation of different groups in different buildings seems to have sharpened divisions connected with funding.

Matters did not improve when an RIBA visiting board’s criticism of design standards and year four structure, gave rise to a partreversal of recent teaching reorganization. In the aftermath in early 1986 John Eynon announced his intention to retire when a suitable replacement could be found.

Regime change reviewed John Eynon cared deeply for the wellbeing of the School and its students; nobody more so. In sympathy with the long-standing liberal traditions of the School, he was prepared to try new ideas. If the ideas were pragmatic and straightforward rather than theory-based and complicated, so much the better. A kindly person, he is remembered for flamboyant handkerchief display and for a startling taste in figures of speech which cheered many an over-long staff meeting. Among them were ‘listening to the other side of the coin’ and ‘grasping a problem by the thorns’. Of a demanding problem he observed ‘this baby falls into our court’ and of divided interests ‘I’ve got a foot in two stools’. Perhaps most vivid was ‘the halcyon days when Cardiff shipping was in full flight’. There were many others.

‘That would be changing courses in mid-stream’ (John Eynon)

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Eynon’s diagnosis of the condition of teaching when he became Head was fundamentally sound. After a long period in which new ideas had been implemented and become well-tried, fresh ideas were needed. His response, plenty of new young staff, was right as far as it went. The people chosen were suitable (as later events were to show) but for the time being their efforts were not always sufficiently co-ordinated or perhaps tempered by experience. A weakening of educational sureness of touch was the result.

Further, the School had become too big and intricate an organization to be seen as a simple layered pyramid. Rather, it was now made up of a number of related, but separate interest groups, some overlapping, others semi-autonomous. Between them, the groups embraced diverse research, teaching and Project Office activities, all competing for limited School resources. With about 45 employees, the management of the School had passed a threshold in degree of complexity.

John Eynon retired late in 1986 when his successor was appointed.

His departure was marked by a memorable evening event attended by very many well-wishers, held at Duffryn House, near Cardiff, early the following year. He was later appointed OBE.

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Chapter 6 MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION: The Later Nineteen Eighties and Nineties

Glut of challenges The person taking over John Eynon’s role as Head in 1986 faced challenges from several directions. The moment recalls Lewis John’s takeover in the black depths of the Second World War. Now, as well as the prospect of adversity breaking in from outside, there was internal uncertainty and friction. Uncertainty came from the impending merger of UWIST with a sickly University College Cardiff. From this David and Goliath encounter the new University of Wales College of Cardiff (suggestively abbreviated to UWCC) emerged in 1988 under UWIST’s AF Trotman-Dickenson. This meant far more than just another parent institution name change (no novelty, that, for the School). From being a large part of a small institution it meant becoming a small part of a large one.

It also meant adapting to a more powerful and vigilant central administration, all the more so with the spread of management scrutiny through performance targets and the like. It hardly made for excitement in the world of architectural education, but it did make implacable demands on how the School behaved. Pursuit of better value meant that old, freer ‘management on the hoof’ was forced into retreat, with a melancholy, long withdrawing roar.

In this pursuit the newly regrouped UWCC was in strong hands under the leadership of Trotman-Dickenson (known as ‘TD’, he was, incidentally, something of an architect manqué). A nationwide search for better value in higher education led to cuts in resources which were strongly felt in the School in funding and staffing levels, and even gave rise at one stage to an odd abortive high level proposal for a merger with the school at Bath.

To this uneasy background the School added a few of its own internal challenges. High on the list was an insistent call from the RIBA visiting board to make improvements to the BArch course or face loss of recognition. Their chief worries were design standards, the structure of year four and linking project work with lectures. A re-visit was expected early in 1987. Other aspects of the course also needed attention, such as over-complicated BArch assessments and a flabby tolerance of unfinished project work. A number of academic staff had just left or were expected shortly to retire; a loss of experience to the School, but help in adjusting to forthcoming cuts. In order to attract first year students there was uncomfortable dependence on ‘clearing’, the late acceptance of applicants with lower academic standards than requested by

61

the School. Studios were too small (a hoary old cri de coeur) and architectural science was divisively sited away in North Road.

Rounding off these woes was every departmental head’s little nightmare of a small guerrilla war between senior figures of opposing persuasions. So far confined in origin to the influence of one personality, it had a bushfire potential to spread.

There were some compensating grounds for optimism among the list of challenges. At root the School was well-founded and still fit for purpose. It possessed a strong research capability and reputation, largely in architectural science. In essentials it still conformed to the far-sighted model put forward at the celebrated RIBA 1958 Oxford Conference, although a little dust had settled along the way. Equally positive was the intangible asset of good staff-student relations with which it had been blessed since early days. Difficulties there certainly were, but an underlying goodwill and sense of balance still lurked ready for awakening.

Teaching with a new pair of hands Richard Silverman was the person appointed as Head of Department to take the School forward (or, fancifully, to restore the sleeping beauty fully to life). To accomplish this task he arrived in late 1986 having been a partner with the Alec French Partnership, Bristol and before that a Senior Lecturer in the Bristol University School.

Witnessing events leading to the unfortunate closure of that School gave him firm ideas on what not to do in Cardiff.

Richard Silverman (WSA)

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Richard Silverman quickly began to propose changes, none revolutionary in itself, but far-reaching in their total effect. The key early act was to compile and win acceptance for a new pattern of teaching throughout the School. To conceive a new structure in the face of cuts was difficult enough, but only part of the battle.

Long-established colleagues, some of whom (as true academics) were professional sceptics, needed to be convinced. As Silverman saw it later, the School had become a Parkinsonian bureaucracy which, having set its own modest standards, then expressed satisfaction in fully meeting them. The instrument by which he introduced course changes was dubbed the Grey Book (a plain A4 affair packing an impact disproportionate to appearance). It set out a series of core design projects for the BSc course, each project representing a generic structural and constructional building type. Examples were second year core project CP4 ‘Hen and Chicks’, a building having a large space plus repetitive smaller spaces, such as a primary school and (both loved and loathed) third year CP6 ‘Domino’, a multistorey repetitive framed building such as an office. The core projects were carefully graded in ascending complexity from first to third years to form the backbone of the course. Additionally, non-core projects offered freedom for a wide variety of other educational fields, specialized and experimental,

such as community architecture, interior design and feasibility studies. The Grey Book also created a framework for basic design and communication skills, timetabling, a distinctive character for each year, staffing and management. New direction was given to year four, the often-controversial basis of a BArch course shorter by one year than most, if not all, others. Year five gained new emphasis on the size and complexity of final design projects with opportunities for students to show competence across the full range of architectural expertise. In all, the Grey Book set out course aims and structure with a rare clarity. Among its merits were flexibility and scope for constructive interpretation. After initial doubt and some passive resistance low down the BSc course it was soon widely accepted: great value and a point of reference.

It decisively moved away from the old course in which fluidity had come to obscure much sense of progressive build-up of students’ knowledge and skills.

‘Other students thought we had an easy ride at rst, with just 4 hours of formal lectures in a week. But studio projects meant long periods of intensive work out of sight. When we eventually surfaced after hand ins, bars would empty. “The architects are coming”!’

(Graduate of 1993)

Underpinning the Grey Book reforms were new arrangements for staffing. Individual workloads were to be distributed in a more transparent way and the roles of year chairmen and others were defined. Senior staff and subject specialists were given more teaching responsibilities, workloads were allocated more fairly and the lecture load was slimmed (an alleged example of earlier over-lecturing was a very protracted series on ‘learning by doing’).

The intricacies of formulae underlying departmental funding were mastered to make best possible use of the university allocation

Pictures at an exhibition: screens under the north lights of the exhibition room.

(WSA)

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system. A result was staffing levels quite generous in comparison with many other schools of architecture. There were other instances of Silverman’s characteristic attention to detail, to the benefit of the School. One was to tighten up earlier easy-going tolerance of late project hand-ins. Another was in his treatment of entry to first year. Student recruitment was found to suffer from the low alphabetical position of the Welsh School in UK university application forms. The solution was to substitute the word Cardiff for Wales. Applications increased accordingly.

‘New broom’ ideas clarified aims and procedures and made better use of resources at many points. Neither was the new climate in the School bought at the cost of deadening managerialism or dull uniformity. Real advances were made despite straitened times being endured by most UK universities. One advance was the continued improvement of the School branch library under Sylvia Harris. The rare books collection was built up and gained such items as Owen Jones’ exquisitely produced Grammar of Ornament of 1856 and Isaac Ware’s Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio of 1738.

In 1993 the architecture library won the highest rating for user satisfaction among ten UWCC library sites. Another advance was gaining 24 hour student access to studios (which may have boosted their output or perhaps maimed any time management skills they had). A well-equipped information technology studio with 24 workstations was opened in 1994 to meet strongly rising demand.

In the same session another portent of coming academic priorities was the launch of a taught MSc in Environmental Design. The timely course attracted growing numbers, many from overseas, and was to blaze the trail for other similar ventures. Less successful was a concerted attempt to bring students and staff together regularly for coffee in a space off the main landing. A hope that the exalted and the humble might mingle on equal terms was not to be fulfilled.

Was this due to the quickening pace of academic life or did the informality and openness of the School, where first names had long replaced titles, make the idea superfluous?

Despite lack of stimulus from coffee, teaching in the School soon responded to the new ideas. Improvement was noted within and, just as important, by disinterested outsiders. Earlier demands from the RIBA visiting board were resolved and new and more exacting external examiners reported favourably on what they found. The powerful Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW), helped along by very supportive students, awarded the School an ‘excellent’ rating for teaching in 1994. Two years later The Times Good University Guide to the top 20 UK schools of architecture placed Cardiff second only to Cambridge for all-round excellence.

Not even UWCC determination to modularize courses and replace the three term academic year with a two semester year could derail the upward path of the School.

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Researching with a new pair of hands Research, especially in architectural science, was at a higher relative level than teaching when Richard Silverman arrived. An early agreement was reached with Pat O’Sullivan for architectural science to return to the main School so as to reunite the intellectual community. The group left its North Road premises for the Bute Building from which it had first moved 16 years previously. Pat O’Sullivan was a serious loss when in 1988 he moved to become Head of the Bartlett School, UCL. He was replaced by Professor Derek Poole, an architect from Hampshire County Council where he had worked on Colin Stansfield-Smith’s acclaimed school buildings. The climate of research was affected further by Alan Lipman’s retirement in the early 1990s. Latterly he had been drawn increasingly from research into teaching and characteristically trenchant architectural criticism. The Project Office carried on a series of small to medium-sized public sector projects. Some attempts were made to inflect its work towards research, but this was not easy.

‘I have always found WSA alumni to have a certain “something else.”

I’m sure this stems from the compressed time in school that prepared us for the pressures of the outside world and afforded us an additional year of learning in practice’.

(Graduate of 1993)

When the time came for the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), by which School funding would be largely determined, Richard Silverman gave it close attention. Much effort was exerted and all academic staff were included in the return as active in research. The result, when it came, fully justified the pains which had been taken. Richard Silverman’s work was triumphantly vindicated by declaration of a grade 5A, one of only three in UK architecture schools. The achievement was all the greater given the previous grade 2 rating; this was perhaps Silverman’s finest hour. The consequences for funding and national reputation were obvious, but the success also placed the School in a strong position in the parent institutional merger. Architecture now had a strong claim in the future allocation of university resources, there then being only four other grade 5 departments in UWCC. A fair wind for architectural science: wind tunnel installed in ground floor laboratory.

(WSA)

65

The exemplary RAE grade gave fresh impetus to research initiatives. One was to set up the Estates Strategy Research Unit (ESRU) in 1994 to work on managing and planning health care and other complicated facilities. Its prime mover was Professor Ceri Davies, a graduate of the School whose achievements in Whitehall have already been noted. Another research initiative was to acquire a wind tunnel and install it in the west wing of the ground floor in 1993. ‘The boys with the toys’ were able to model the built environment in ways which complemented their widelyrecognised HTB2 thermal modelling software. Following Derek Poole’s retirement in 1994 these research capabilities, mainly directed at sustainability, comprised the Centre for Research in the Built Environment (CRiBE), a Welsh Development Agency Centre of Expertise. CRiBE was directed by Professor Phillip Jones with a full-time staff of 12; by 1996 annual income exceeded £350,000.

In addition ESRU held research grants to the value of £300,000.

Most of the other research and consultancy was through individual scholarship and small-scale collaboration. Teaching staff time for this was boosted by Richard Silverman’s policy, although always under pressure from other academic commitments (including administration). Staff time was freed by employing part-timers for some teaching duties, and carefully applying university funding formulae. Individual researchers’ various activities were grouped for mutual support into three subject groups, one being Architectural Science. The others were Professional Methods (made up of ESRU, Project Office, law and practice, and participation), and History and Theory (made up of modernism, construction history, analysing architecture and French historical architecture).

Outreach and refit External relations with the wider world were shifting and growing in novel ways. Near home Richard Silverman cultivated relations with the Engineering Faculty, finding it a useful source of guidance. Cordial relations with local architectural practices were kept up although their high-level influence had slowly faded over the years. They had grown from small pre-war local gentlemen’s club of practice principals into a larger gathering of footloose professionals in veiled competition with one another.

The growth of the parent institution from local technical college to nationally-significant university had also, if anything, reduced the voice of the local profession in the running of the School. The days when figures from practice like Sir Percy Thomas PRIBA could exert benevolent influence behind the scenes on behalf of the School had passed. As influence of local practices at the formal institutional level had declined, so it had reappeared elsewhere in the valuable form of part-time teaching. Once, a few partner-level architects had given occasional lectures at the School, now many project architects came to give design tutorials and crits. These

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enthusiastic practising architects on whom the School routinely depended now often travelled greater distances than formerly.

Although many continued to come from Cardiff, others came from further afield, typically London and Bristol.

Easier communications and travel also brought freer international movement to teaching just as it had done to research. Student overseas study visits all over Europe and beyond were now commonplace. Now there were also more distant connections as with the Wizo School in Haifa, Israel, first organized for accreditation purposes through the University of Wales. A joint design project and Israeli full-time students studying in Cardiff followed.

Use of specialized teaching facilities belonging to outside organizations such as the Cement and Concrete Association gradually diminished. There were fewer organized site visits and little or no live building operations or live trades instruction.

Student experience had become less practical for reasons of institutional risk aversion, cost and a retreat by the profession from close involvement with manufacturing and trade processes.

‘An important and enjoyable element of the course was the eld trips overseas. Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona. All unique cities with great architecture, culture and exotic life; experienced in our formative years.

These experiences helped the WSA to give us more than just a quali cation. It gave us a wider outlook on life’.

(Graduate of 1993)

A new link between School and wider world was the setting up of the Computers in Teaching Initiative for the Built Environment (CTI) in 1995 jointly with the UWCC Planning Department. The Centre was to provide information and advice on using computers to teach architecture, planning, building construction and property management throughout the UK. Much of the Bute Building into which this restless growth and change (just) fitted was now 80 years old. A major refurbishment was put into the hands of the local Burgess architectural practice. From it emerged by stages a lighter, brighter home with more seminar rooms, refitted lecture spaces, new building services and so on. All studios were grouped in the Bute Building and a studio outstation on Corbett Road was abandoned, to be fondly remembered by some more than others. Newly arranged clusters of staff rooms opening on to shared teaching and circulation space worked well to strengthen informal flexibility (despite connotations of the name, The Pit).

Fewer staff, more students Full-time teaching staff became scarcer during the Richard Silverman decade. Near its beginning, in 1987, the line-up was as follows: Professors Richard Silverman, Pat O’Sullivan, Alan Lipman, and (part-time) Charles MacCallum and Ivor Richards; Senior Lecturers Vernon Barber, Stanley Cox, Peter Lewis, Jeremy Lowe, Malcolm Parry, John Roberts and Bob Tranter; Lecturers John Carter, Bob Fowles, Mike Harries, Phillip Jones, Bernard

67

Winter away day: well clad staff at Gregynog, central Wales in bitter weather 1987 (left to right) Simon Unwin, Christopher Powell, Mike Harries, Don Alexander, Nigel Vaughan, Alwyn Jones, David Singleton, Phil Jones, Alan Lipman (?), Mike Fedeski, John Roberts, Peter Lewis, Pat O’Sullivan, Jeremy Lowe, Richard Silverman, Bob Fowles, Malcolm Parry.

(R. Silverman)

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Keay, David Leighton, Richard Parnaby, Christopher Powell, David Singleton and Simon Unwin. Of these and about to leave were younger John Eynon appointments John Carter and Richard Parnaby (David Grech, Bernard Keay and Richard Weston had already just left). Pat O’Sullivan left after having played a key role with lasting influence at University level in the merger. In due course he was appointed OBE. Another notable retirement at this time was AW (‘Bert’) Horwood whose conscientious services as School Secretary stretched back well into the distant days of Lewis John. More academic staff also left before long, mostly for retirement, in the early 1990s: Vernon Barber, Stanley Cox, Mike Harries, Alan Lipman, Jeremy Lowe, Charles MacCallum and John Roberts. The mid-nineties brought yet more departures: Ivor Richards to Newcastle-upon-Tyne School, Peter Lewis to develop a computer business, Derek Poole, David Leighton and Bob Tranter to retirement. Thus the School lost no fewer than 15 full-time academics during the years that it began to earn top ratings for teaching and research. Newcomers offset some of these losses, but there had still been a productivity gain fit to gladden Mrs Thatcher’s heart.

The new appointments had several interesting attributes, one being that almost half of them were professors: Derek Poole, then Ceri Davies and, in 1995, Dean Hawkes who arrived from the Cambridge School. His interests and values matched those of

Joys of graduation day: Mark Querfurth and Rachel Sayers, BSc 1993.

(WSA)

Cardiff very well, and he had a rare ability to conduct research while also getting his built designs published. Another attribute of the new appointments was that they included the first woman full-time permanent member of staff to join the School, Sarah Lupton. After research and practice in London, she took up work in 1993 in contract law and practice, the field successfully pursued

by Stanley Cox who retired shortly after (he was appointed MBE).

The following year the splendid isolation of her gender ceased with the arrival of historian Judi Loach from Oxford Brookes School. Wayne Forster was appointed in 1992, having previously had contracting experience before graduating from the School and gaining practice and other academic experience. The new arrivals were completed by Norman Robson-Smith who came from a local authority to take over the Project Office from John Roberts. Space precludes individual mention of the very many part-time teaching appointments who helped the School, although an exception must be made for Professor Bill Davies who brought North Wales practice experience to the BSc. Others who joined the School as researchers and specialists (some of them some years earlier) also frequently taught. Among them were Don Alexander, Mike Fedeski, Huw Jenkins, Ian Knight, Simon Lannon, Greg Powell and Nigel Vaughan. Tad Grajewski was with ESRU until shortly before his tragically early death in 2001; New Zealander Jeff Johns endeared himself to many while teaching computing. These and many more contributed enormously at all teaching levels.

While the number of full-time staff fell due to retirements and career moves, student numbers moved the other way. In 1986 and 1987 entries to first year stood at around 55, climbing to the upper 60s or more by 1995. The proportion of women entering first year hovered around 30 per cent, maintaining a long, but unspectacular upward trend. Different student nationalities increased along with total numbers of students, with many continuing to come from the Far East, particularly Malaysia and Hong Kong. This westward

69

migration had its counter movement in the job scarcity of the early 1990s which threatened the working of the year four education in practice year. BSc graduates went eastwards for work while first year entrants came in the opposite direction.

Architecture arising

‘Design projects… forged strong bonds of friendship amongst us; through shared toil and experiences, together with hard earned camaraderie. These bonds remain strong many years after leaving the WSA – almost like family. We may see each other less and less as time goes on but when we do, we slip into old times as if we last saw each other the day before’.

(Graduate of 1993)

In what may be termed its late-Silverman maturity, the School was a quite different place to study architecture from what it had been only seven or eight years earlier. It was managed more tightly, with explicit aims, clear procedures and prudent use of resources: it was more efficient. What of its products, the designs which were emerging? Typical student projects were now larger and altogether more ambitious. By year three the complementary influences of Charles MacCallum and Malcolm Parry were evident, the one quietly thoughtful and the other a robust catalyst. In third and fi fth years crisp-looking auditoria, museums and galleries abounded (a few tending to near-megalomaniac size). Fifth year final designs under Ivor Richards’ direction and with Bob Tranter as BArch Course Convenor showed what Silverman later described as ‘an explosion of creativity’. A strong influence was Richard Meier (in whose office some students worked) although many designs went well beyond the American’s conservative modernism. Earlier schemes of mass housing (dying echo of a big public building programme) and small ‘stretched domestic’ libraries and visitor centres became extinct. Also extinct were the full working drawings and measured drawings which had run since the very beginning. Now there was greater self-assurance and a stronger, wholehearted grasp of international modernism rather than neovernacular and post-modern ventures often of a tentative kind.

More surefooted design was backed by technical studies combining structure, construction and environment and, not least, more rigorous elementary planning. The new confidence was backed by new graphic techniques using computers and hybrid manual and computer draughting. At best there was a colourful forcefulness boosted by enterprising and painstaking model making. After Dean Hawkes took over from Ivor Richards in 1995 BArch design underwent another change. Working with Wayne Forster, he cut the size of projects, but increased their reflective qualities and rigour.

Students were now designing visibly different architecture with visibly different staff resources, more computers and a far stronger studio culture. If anything, in the BSc course there was less time to engage in free-range thinking and reflection (though more to stimulate creativity). Likewise, there were said to be fewer opportunities to risk making mistakes in design and then recover from them without low final assessment. Close familiarity with, or dependence upon, the teachings of one tutor was giving way to acquaintance with many. A sense of being part of a long unbroken educational tradition was giving ground to a more magpie-like pick-

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Year ďŹ ve thesis: conference centre and hotel, Glenshee, Scotland, by Paula Willmore 1987.

(WSA)

Year three ďŹ nal design: National Art Gallery, Cardiff,

by Michael Keys, 1987, plan and sections.

(WSA)

71

Royal visit: the Prince of Wales meets students before looking at their work.

(WSA)

and-mix experience. A decisive step had been taken away from old craft-derived teaching, in which the one ‘right way’ to do things was passed unquestioningly from one generation to the next. The architectural culture of the School was more influenced by what went on in London, albeit filtered of what were seen in Cardiff as its high-flown excesses. The resulting architecture emerging from the School was acquiring more power to inspire and delight its audience and creators. A possible consequence could have been curtailed relevance to the more mundane day-to-day needs of architectural practice. If true, Richard Silverman would have likely been quick to counter with his preference for ‘both – and’ rather than ‘either – or’, that is to say, architecture both inspiring and relevant, not either inspiring or relevant.

Taking stock Of all the changes generated in the School during Richard Silverman’s Headship, one in particular stood out. It was change in confidence: the School had come to believe strongly in itself and what it stood for. Not without reason. The proximate causes of this sense of ‘feel good’ and ‘can do’ were the various systematic national comparisons made by disinterested sources (RAE, HEFCW, national press). Repeatedly the School had been objectively ranked against other schools and found to be among the leaders. How had this agreeable state of affairs been achieved?

Confidence was not gained easily or in a fit of absent-mindedness.

It had been acquired through a series of deliberate management decisions. The cumulative effect of what HEFCW called ‘light but firm leadership….meticulously planned [and] well orchestrated’ was a slimmer, more lively and energetic School. Objectives were clarified and full use made of limited resources (neither could be taken for granted in all academic institutions). Staff personalities

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Upper, students Jonathan Tarbatt, Mark Amer and David Rhodes with model, c.1998.

(WSA)

Left, ‘Domino’ third year office project, Dicky Lau, 1989.

(WSA)

and skills were ingeniously and sometimes surprisingly matched with tasks and each other so as to best use their potential. Once a virtuous cycle was established, success began to breed success.

The leadership style was suited both to the spirit of the times and to the nature of the School. Proceeding generally by consent and without undue histrionics, obvious risks were avoided. A cool pursuit of what was reasonable and balanced was coupled with some aversion to the irrational. Similar qualities were reflected in project designs. Whether leadership style and architectural design were causally connected is moot, but to be sure Cardiff design had always been lean on rhetoric and strong on pragmatism. If the creative atmosphere and sense of intellectual ferment sometimes fell below a passionate intensity, it was due most of all to global uncertainties in the subject and the uneasy state of the profession in the UK. Caution and suspicion of excess in design in Cardiff occasionally provoked comment. Some external examiners were

73

‘…no one could have prepared me for the hard work and dedication that is necessary to complete Parts One and Two, I was equally unprepared for the great sense of camaraderie and enthusiasm from my fellow students and staff alike’.

(Graduate of c.1997)

troubled that students steered (relatively) clear of the heroic experiments found in London architectural schools. ‘Where’ it was once asked, ‘is the danger?’ This struck some in the School, at least, as an odd priority given the circumstances of the profession.

The RIBA Strategic Study found that the influence of the profession suffered among clients and rival professions through inattention to non-design aspects. This implied that it was not ‘danger’ in design that was needed so much as a wider competence. In responding to criticism of undue caution, of being too sensible, the School remained generally unapologetic. Third year chairman Malcolm Parry remarked that ‘we don’t do smudges on the wall’, meaning vague doodles just about able to be interpreted as the germ of an architectural idea. Likewise the muted response to Silverman’s apparently sound idea of spurring design freedom through noncore projects made a similar point: the School stood for balance and restraint over untrammelled creativity. This meant that successful design demanded both intuitive insight and recognition of a whole range of design criteria. In the words of a 1994 selfappraisal document ‘[i]n both teaching and research we…seek, even when examining a single aspect for any purpose, to retain a healthy awareness of other factors’.

Richard Silverman stepped down as Head in late 1996, continuing in full-time employment. An ensuing Research Assessment Exercise which dipped one grade did little to detract from his achievement.

He had wrought a substantial transformation in standards and in the means of meeting them. It was a sound and happy legacy for those who were to follow.

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Chapter 7 PUSHING THE PROFILE: The Turn of the Century

The man and his course The few years either side of the millennium year were confident and stable ones for the School, free of externally-imposed disruption. While the dot.com boom came and went, along with 9/11, the architectural profession prospered. The new Head who inherited this rosy state was long-term member of staff and Senior Lecturer Malcolm Parry. A native of South Wales with early experience of surveying in the mining industry, he had joined the first student cohort to pass through the School under Dewi-Prys Thomas’ direction. That time of charismatic leadership was a formative infl uence on the young Malcolm Parry, which imparted a warm enthusiasm for architecture, the School and those who belonged to it. As a graduate he had worked in local public authority architects’ departments before joining the staff of the School. Here he combined a broad appreciation of architecture with a specialist interest in lighting. This last he researched with Pat O’Sullivan’s architectural science group, at one time taking an infl uential American sabbatical at Berkeley.

An empathetic personality together with an ability to bring things to life well suited him to media performances. He became a familiar fi gure on Welsh television where he enthusiastically made the architectural case to a wider public. In this he was following the trail pioneered by William Purchon’s wireless talks of 60 years earlier, as well as Dewi-Prys Thomas’ more recent broadcasts.

The coming man: Malcolm Parry when a lecturer.

(WSA)

Upon becoming Head in early 1997 Malcolm Parry could survey the position of the School as one well versed in how it worked. He had played a part in Richard Silverman’s reforms and understood them well. His opinion was that ‘[i]n the ten years of [Silverman’s] leadership, the potential of the School was realised….The School owes a debt of gratitude to Richard for his vision and guidance’. The starting point for the new Head was that much had already been achieved, not least the creation of a smoothly-working management machine. With internal effectiveness assured, it was now time to look outwards: the School was now poised to add a more colourful and prominent public profi le. Not only did the School have a message worth telling people about, it was well placed to play a bigger part in the life of the community and the University. For these priorities Malcolm Parry’s inclinations and personality were well suited.

75

Malcom Parry (right) in conversation.

(WSA)

There were also other aims, one of them a stern one which affected funding. Research must be boosted to regain a top grade at the next Research Assessment Exercise in a few years’ time. Another aim was to extract as much as possible from external teaching by integrating staff and visiting tutors more closely into teams. Some visitors treated a day in the studios as time off the leash when serious design constraints could be ignored. While this could be entertaining, and surprising, it was not so good educationally. If visitors (who had now grown numerous) could be persuaded to adopt staff educational aims more closely, more staff time would be freed for research. And more than ever, research was what decided funding and position in the University and wider world.

Hands to the academic pump Most comings and goings of full-time academic staff took place in the first half of Malcolm Parry’s Headship and affected the BSc course. The first and tragically unwelcome change came after only a few weeks with the early death through illness of David Singleton.

Later the same year two women were appointed, thereby doubling the number of their gender on staff. University of Greenwich lecturer Sophia Psarra was educated in Athens and at the Bartlett School and had worked in the Zaha Hadid London office. Flora Samuel was a Cambridge graduate who joined from the University of Plymouth School. The following year Juliet Odgers, another Cambridge graduate and with London practice experience, was appointed. She was followed by the return of Richard Weston, from Portsmouth and Leicester Schools since he was last on staff at Cardiff in 1986. His return as Visiting Fellow in the mid-nineties was followed by appointment in 1999 to bring fresh experience to BSc teaching. It also brought a prolific stream of elegant books on matters modern and Scandinavian and original ideas on a range of allied subjects rewarded in due course with a Chair. In early 2001 Andrew Marsh was appointed to further his research work. There were three senior level departures. In 1999 Richard Silverman left full-time employment; in 2000 his work as a board member of Cardiff Bay Development Corporation was recognized by his being

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Chapter 7

appointed OBE. The two other experienced figures who left at about this time were Professor Ceri Davies who retired and parttime Professor Bill Davies.

Full-time staff planned the course, administered and monitored it.

Much design teaching was by visitors and part-timers, who were a mainstay of tutorials and crits. They were a reserve army (or gangs of sub-contractors, according to taste) bringing with them fresh ideas. They had their counterparts in other schools of architecture, in many of which they played a larger role than in Cardiff. Names changed from year to year, but some people and some practices recurred so that bonds grew over time. Some valued names in the late 1990s included local practices HLN and Gordon Lewis Associates (later White Young Green), and from London, Edward Jones of Dixon Jones, Rab Bennetts, Michael Brawne, DEGW, Nicholas Hare, John McAslan, Patel Taylor and Peter Wynne Rees (City of London chief planner and a Cardiff graduate). To these were added a long list of others who appeared for single events or projects. Taking the session 1996-7 as a random example, and in addition to the stalwarts already listed, visitors and firms included Sadlers Wells Chief Executive Ian Albery; Alsop and Stormer; Arup; Foster Associates; Buro Happold; Hodder Associates; CJ Lim; Penoyre and Prasad; and developers Stanhope.

A very different school: project for a school of architecture in Aberystwyth, Timothy Green, third year 2002.

(WSA)

Appointment of teaching assistants chosen from year five graduates was a novelty begun in 2000. They helped hard-pressed year tutors with day-to-day running of a year of students while also pursuing their own higher degrees. The first two of this new breed were graduates Eleena Jamil and Paul Bulkeley, although their distant ancestors in the role were Purchon’s ‘junior instructors’ of the 1930s.

Reality and imagination in teaching The statistical hard facts were that in 1998 the School had a complement of 300 students, together with 32 postgraduates, 40 academic, research and administrative staff and about 50 part-time tutors and critics. Less tangible were the aims of the course. The Undergraduate Handbook blandly mentioned equipping graduates for careers within and without the profession, and fostering continuing personal development through lifelong learning. Three stated principles bring the priorities of the time a little closer: first, the practice of architecture was founded on meeting human needs; second, the discipline was defined by its history; and third, practice rested on an understanding of the technologies of building, process and communication. Teaching was said to be fundamentally supported by research, particularly in sustainability, by this time linking many School activities. A ‘supportive, collaborative and congenial’ learning environment was claimed along with close contact with the profession. ‘[I]magination and logic, freedom and responsibility were not in opposition’, but were in ‘creative interdependence’.

77

Such were the beliefs and hopes. It was characteristic of the School that the means were given as much, or more, prominence than the aims. In the BSc course the stress, as ever, was heavily on design projects (making up two thirds of assessed work) with the remainder being formally taught and assessed. The decade-old pattern of core design projects was retained and had been coaxed into the modular structure favoured by the university. Each undergraduate year had four modules, subjects of which differed somewhat between succeeding student years.

Students completing year three were intended to be informed in ten areas: Rejection of the right angle: Media Mall, Centre for Digital Art, Cardiff, a project from the BArch light shade and movement thematic studio, by William Coubrough, 2002.

-

(WSA)

-

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imaginative insight into user needs mastery of complex three-dimensional design problems integration of social, technical, cultural, environmental and resource considerations articulation of feelings connected with experience of buildings personal artistic vision self-management and communication skills study of architectural precedent understanding of architectural history in context appreciation of environmental design and use of sustainable resources understanding of sound use of materials.

Comparison between this list and its equivalent from Purchon’s time (had it existed) would show some points in common. Among new ones were user needs, feelings connected with experience of buildings, and sustainability.

The aims of the BArch course were ‘to extend…experience and knowledge of building types through the development of critical judgement, the conception, planning, construction and environmental systems of complex buildings…in urban settings’. To this were added aims to do with professional practice and specialization. The first year of the BArch, year four of the course as a whole, continued to be based in practice. A sizeable minority of students chose to work in the Far East, Australia, North America and parts of mainland Europe. Each session several short courses were held for them back at the School, there were distance learning exercises and staff visits to offices. The School prided itself on keeping in close touch with students in offices scattered widely over the globe, something not much found among other schools. For the second year of the BArch, year five of the course, students returned full-time to Cardiff to work mainly on final design projects. Teaching for this was an intensive version of that in the BSc, rather than the unit system found in many other schools. The year began with a group urban study visit and design. For example, in 1997 the visit was to Barcelona and the design was for Cardiff Bay and city. Students’ various personal enthusiasms were then harnessed through guided individual choice of building type and site for the final design. In that same year site choice ranged from the immediate (eight in Cardiff) to the far flung (five in Israel, four in Kuala Lumpur) with others in Sydney, Berlin, Hong Kong and Malmo. Home choices were in London, Welsh mining valleys, crumbly and bosky Beaupre, Loch Lomond and Tintagel, and elsewhere. These site choices implied where architectural opportunities were perceived. This slender insight into the current creative and intellectual climate is enlarged by the building types which stirred interest: mostly for the arts (58 per cent of choices) including many assorted museums. Buildings for social functions or connected with government were the second favourite choice. Housing (an earlier popular choice) was only vestigially present and commercial and industrial buildings were chosen hardly at all.

‘…the most remarkable thing…was that there was a wonderful sense of the staff’s collective responsibility and commitment to the success of each individual student and a very real care for the importance of a young person’s education. I particularly remember one year working with Wayne and all the retake students whose circumstances were often pretty grim and I was struck by the compassion and wholeheartedness of Wayne’s commitment to those students. I don’t think you could count on that in many schools of architecture’.

(External critic and tutor)

After the arrival of Professor Dean Hawkes in 1995 emphasis in design gradually shifted from buildings as object, as fostered by his predecessor Ivor Richards. Stress was laid instead on the idea of buildings as subject, that is to say, as subject of analysis and (often protracted) dialogue and debate. This subtle move was characteristic of Dean Hawkes’ unobtrusive, but far-reaching influence on design. Not only farreaching, but wide-ranging, with scholarly interests spanning all the way from the arts and crafts to architectural science. With interests embracing both theoretical writings and live architectural practice, he continued to reflect the profile of the School closely, a combined microcosm and stimulus.

79

‘The WSA degree allows students to discover their own talents through research and rst principle thinking.

I am grateful for the opportunity to discover architecture with knowledgeable tutoring, without being subjected to a prescriptive style or topic’.

(Graduate of 1996)

The MSc in Environmental Design attracted a few BArch or even BSc graduates and many overseas students. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it was aimed at the role of the environmental designer.

Growing from a standing start, the MSc competed hungrily for staff time and in due course was fitted firmly into the life of the School. Further opportunities at this level opened in the late 1990s with a new MPhil in Architectural and Urban Design, led by Dean Hawkes. In this expansion of Masters level courses, as with some other initiatives, architectural science had been the pioneer and standard-setter, which others had followed. Architectural science was foremost in the gradually growing number of research students at Masters and PhD levels, but historical and design-related subjects were also coming forward more often than before. Professional Practice examinations (formerly RIBA Part 3) completed postgraduate activities in the School.

This significant field continued to develop under Sarah Lupton’s guidance together with the Royal Society of Architects in Wales (RSAW, formerly SWIA).

Reviewing the creative output of the School, Malcolm Parry detected what he saw as a particular characteristic: ‘a stronger emphasis on the poetic nature of ideas’. In that sense the long march away from the grim architectural realities of post-war social purpose, evident for the last three decades, was still in progress.

For him, emerging designs now shared ‘a sense of reality as well as imagination…they deal with the art of the probable rather than the merely possible’. It was an apt way of phrasing the balance between creative design and practicability achieved in the School.

Tower inspires awe: year three Cardiff Bay project 1999.

(WSA)

Students’ forays into ‘the art of the probable’ owed much to vigorous drawings and models. Combinations of the two were strongly evident: fine drawing used to back craftsmanlike threedimensional depictions of parts of buildings. This fashion captured the best of two worlds, showing hybrid vigour of a kind. Another kind was the way computer-aided design and draughting (CAD) was combined with manual techniques, again aiming at the best of both. Pragmatic step-by-step invention was rated above purist adherence to an overarching system. Success in design more usually arose from creatively fusing several or many factors, rather than pushing any one factor to an extreme. Search for balance was a characteristic feature of the School.

Underpinning creative design was a growing range of facilities. The library, resplendent with the important-sounding (but worryingly imprecise) title of Resource Centre, added new media such as CD-ROM to its collections. In computing services, supply seemed doomed to lag demand from students. They were encouraged to buy their own laptops, but still queued eagerly to use increasingly powerful, but costly printing and other equipment. The main CAD package was changed from AutoCad to MiniCad in an attempt

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School floor plan: space use in 1998.

(WSA)

Artificial Sky Laboratory Wind Tunnel Laboratory Model Room Technical Base/Store Exhibition Room Crit Room Green Room Project Office Vacant Royal Society of Architects in Wales Arthur Owen Year 1 Studio Year 1 Studio Year 1 Studio Year 1 Studio Year 2 Studio Year 2 Studio Glass Sminar Room Year 3 Studio Coffee Bar Year 3/5 Studio Lecture Room MSc Studio Year 5 Studio Lecture Theatre Jeff Johns CAD Room Library and annexes Andrew Roberts Diane Bowden Carole Baker

0.41 0.42 227 201 202 203 204 204b 205/206 207-9 210 211 212 213 220 222 224 223 225 226 228 230 231 232 233a 233 240 234b 234 234

School Reception Post Room -Jan O’Brien Jane Matthews Malcolm Parry Mary Brice Dean Hawkes Staff Room Emma Bland/ Katie Crump Sophia Psarra Christopher Powell Richard Silverman Phil Jones Lynda Bevan Lucy Hammond Ceri Davies Nicola Weaver & Joanne Williams Simon Lannon & Huw Jenkins Tad Grajewski Mike Fedeski Research DTP Room/Seminar ESRU Simon Unwin Year 1 Tutorial Gallery Robert Fowles Flora Samuel The Bridge/ Staff Study Postgraduate Room Postgraduate Room Postgraduate Room Postgraduate Room Bob Cooper/ John Phillips Visitor Base Jonathan Williams & Kelvin Jones Lara Howes & Chris Mutch Sarah Lupton Judi Loach Dave Bull Ian Knight Paul Thomas Don Alexander Wayne Forster

252 252b 253 256 257 258 259 260 263 264 265 306 307 308 309 311 310 304 303 302 305 326 321/323/325 320 322 401 T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T10 T11 T12 T13 T14 T15 T16

81

to make computing more design-led. Ink-jet printing replaced the older pen plotter. By attracting the RSAW in 1998, Malcolm Parry nudged the School closer to the profession and the public.

Office accommodation for the Society was found, despite the Bute Building already straining at the seams, near the south east corner and close to the Project Office.

CRiBE, DRU-w and their kin

Upper, Language Faculty, Bristol. A year five final design by Tim Browne, 2002.

(WSA)

Lower, flying or landed?

Model of Museum of Twentieth Century Fashion, London, by David Tur, year five 1999.

(WSA)

‘Changes in the WSA? A massive increase in part-time teaching – that’s the real difference in the last 20 years. And the increasing size of the research arm’.

(Graduate of 1992)

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Research provided contacts with the wider world of government, commerce and practice and also conferred invaluable ideas and standards of rigour on the academic community. Not least, it was also remunerative. Under the umbrella of the Centre for Research in the Built Environment (CRiBE) work fell into the four areas of sustainability, energy and environmental modelling, energy performance, and building construction. The diverse field of sustainability included an energy and environmental prediction model for cities (EEP), and work on office buildings, re-cycling and waste. The various collaborators and funders ranged from the Welsh Development Agency (WDA), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), local authorities, and academic and commercial interests in the UK and Hong Kong. Energy and environmental modelling and performance research included work with HTB2 software (for example on Malaysian housing), integrated local energy sources, and thermographic surveys of buildings.

Funding agencies included the Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU) and Building Research Establishment (BRE) Conservation Support Unit (BRECSU). Building construction research was in house building as a manufacturing process, jointly with housebuilders Westbury plc and the University of Warwick. A new venture was the Design Research Unit Wales (DRU-w) initiated by Dean Hawkes and Wayne Forster. It quickly distinguished itself when its low energy factory at Baglan won a Corus International Design Award in 2000, a Civic Trust Environmental Award in 2001 and an RIBA Regional Award in 2002. This glimpse of architectural science research (alphabet soup and all) is rounded off by the ESRU group, engaged in three main areas. These were studies of medical scanning services (funded by the EU), movement in large building complexes, and hospital space utilization.

Professional methods research was made up of work by the Project Office, and the CTI centre, renamed the Centre for Education in the Built Environment (CEBE) in 2000. Focused at first on computing, it now broadened its concerns. With the retirement of instigator Peter Lewis in 1996, Bob Fowles became a CEBE co-director along with a member of the University City and Regional Planning Department. The professional methods group also worked on legal and management aspects of practice.

Architectural history and theory research mainly took the form of individual scholarship and publication. This ranged from studies

of art and science in architectural design, to lighting and the visual environment, seventeenth and twentieth century France, the British construction industry, and analysing architecture.

Such was a snapshot of research with the approach of the millennium year. Concurrently at another level was the work of growing ranks of higher degree students, the unsung foot soldiers of research drawn from backgrounds as wonderfully diverse as Eton, the Sudan and the Welsh valleys. Their undoubtedly wide interests included Israeli modernism, Saudi Arabian courtyard housing, interwar German building construction, UK lighthouses, naturally ventilated offices and energy efficient lighting: no problem too big, or small, or distant that it could not yield to systematic analysis.

Precocious section: year three design for Coed Cymru Forestry Centre, midWales, by W. Coubrough, 2000.

(WSA)

Research was to good effect both absolutely and, it soon emerged, relative to other schools of architecture. After the setback of losing a grade in the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise, the result of the next RAE was keenly awaited. When it was announced in 2001, Malcolm Parry’s efforts to raise the priority of research were fully vindicated: a 5A rating, the highest of any UK school of architecture.

Students onward and upward First year student intakes around the turn of the century varied in size and character with the vagaries of people and the university applications system. Numbers fluctuated around 60 to 80 and the proportion of women varied from only about 26 per cent in session 1999 – 2000 to about 43 per cent the following year. If numbers and gender balance varied widely, levels of commitment to the course seem to have remained stable. Time after time RIBA visiting boards revealed strongly supportive student opinion lucidly expressed in private meetings (i.e. with no staff present). Typically, a turn-

83

‘…As a foreign student I felt that Cardiff was really welcoming’.

(Graduate of c.2001)

of-the-century visiting board found students ‘committed to their courses…lively…articulate and confident’, evidence that students’ reasonable wants and expectations were being met.

Nor was there reason to believe that students were becoming over the years any less demanding and discerning. Rather the reverse, since they were now to be regarded more and more as ‘customers’ who paid for their education and expected results.

Their academic standards had climbed upwards (even after allowing for possible grade inflation in secondary education).

This followed a growing national and international reputation which enabled the School to select from a highly talented pool of applicants. As a result students’ positive attitude to their education was matched by staff recognition of student intellectual and creative potential. A virtuous spiral ensued (hopefully with any drift to complacency being curtailed by pressure of work).

SAWSA, the now venerable focus of student collective activity, was organized with a committee of year two student president and 11 officers plus year representatives. In the session 1998– 9, to take a random example, SAWSA sports and social events included a summer ball, an annual magazine entitled Cymrarch, a programme of visiting speakers and a series of life drawing classes. Continuity was kept up through and between academic sessions (although occasional death-defying organizational panics could not be ruled out).

Cardiff Bay Tower and friend: King Kong unofficially helps open an exhibition of third year projects, 1999.

(WSA)

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If student life is portrayed as committed and organized, that conveys only part of the story. Beneath the smooth, semiofficial exterior lay a fathomless seething mass of student life as actually lived. For most it was a gloriously colourful and anarchic experience, likely recalled as a vivid mix of pleasure, pride, regrets and, as may be, bravado. Yet the luxuriant improbability and sheer toil of architectural student life (with its attendant angsts) are fugitive qualities. Only a hint of the reality is offered by a small incident, a drop in an ocean of bizarre behaviour. It was at the public opening ceremony of an exhibition organized by year three students, of a Cardiff Bay skyscraper project.

London practice principal Nicholas Hare was invited to formally open the exhibition which included many models of huge Manhattan-style towers. While he declaimed on the fine quality of work a scuffle at the back of the hall revealed an unadvertised King Kong cavorting among the towers. Nicholas Hare was unruffled by the giant simian and the exhibition was duly declared open. As a footnote, a relic of the project, one of the tower models, still lingers on display in the library at the time of writing. This anecdote maybe captures a little of the spirit of the times under Malcolm Parry’s Headship: serious hard work tinged with humour and the unexpected.

Five years on Malcolm Parry retired as Head in 2002 after five years in the post and a total of 34 years full-time on staff. His time as Head was marked by the successful restoration of a full grade 5A in research, topping the national league at a time of escalating overall standards. RAE grading was now generally accepted as central to university life, for good or ill, and was prized as such. The achievement was all the greater for having been won without apparent conflict with teaching quality, staff satisfaction or student relations. Malcolm Parry questioned whether the greedy demands of research on staff time might have been to the detriment of student experience, but evidence was absent. Rather, it seems, the need for staff to focus their teaching on essentials (demanded by the four year in house course) brought out the best in people. At any event, the decision to feed research had two effects: to play to existing strengths in the School and to enhance its reputation.

‘The School was dominated by a handful of characters on the staff’.

(Graduate of 1996)

Allied to reputation was the question of relations between School and wider context. Here Malcolm Parry’s radio and television appearances, such as his three-part House of the Future and a six-parter on the role of individual rooms, brought wider public awareness of architecture, the School and its Head. Hard evidence of how much this raised the public profile is scarce, but there is anecdotal evidence. For the first time the School had a Head who could be buttonholed by passersby in the street and greeted in his architect role. In his own words, ‘I want the public involved [with architecture]….People will talk about Damien Hirst but they don’t talk about buildings. That’s why I get out there.’ A different aspect of recognition for the School was about its position as one university department among many. Architects on staff traditionally looked more to their profession than to other academics as peers. Malcolm Parry believed that efforts to integrate the School more closely with its parent institution had met with only limited success. If so, he had encountered an attitude which was deeply entrenched in his profession (and maybe not in its best interests).

Just as anecdote must serve as evidence of success in raising the profile of the School, so it must also serve in another way, to do with the climate of thought and behaviour in the School. By nature it left little tangible historical record behind it, but people present at the time carry strong impressions with them. Recollections are mostly of actions in which human values were placed above tactical management procedures. Malcolm Parry has paid tribute to the source of strength he found in staff commitment to students and School. His view was not merely one directional, but was mutually felt.

A contrast in terms of the classical architectural tradition highlights some respective personal qualities of the two successive Heads, Richard Silverman and Malcolm Parry. The earlier Head may be characterized as being of the Doric order, crisply infused with austere order and clarity. The later Head may be characterized as of the Corinthian order, intricate, involved and entertainingly enriched.

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Chapter 8 INTERNATIONAL AMBITIONS: The Twenty-First Century

Sunshine then showers Nationally, the years between 2002 and the time of writing were expansionary, but turning bleak. Some topics of the day were globalization, energy and, near home, the Welsh Assembly. These themes all made their mark on the life of the School. So too, as ever, did events in the University and in the architectural profession.

Changes in the University were led by Cardiff’s independence from the federal University of Wales in 2004. As one of the Russell Group of leading British universities, Cardiff had progressed well, at one stage ranking seventh out of over 100 universities in quality of research and with ‘excellent’ rated teaching in more than 20 subjects. Having proclaimed itself a research-led university, it befitted every department more than ever to perform accordingly, or face a short sharp shock. The University was locked in intensifying competition with others and driven like many public institutions by its position in performance league tables. Seeking comparative advantage, it became more of a corporate entity than before, being managed along business lines. This caused some decision making and administration to be devolved to school level and the remainder to be more tightly controlled by the University central authority. The 30 or so heads of schools managed as they would with lean resources at school level, under the eyes of the centre: more departmental autonomy in some ways, but exercised in a bracing climate of accountability.

The School goes east: Phil Jones in China early in the new century.

(P. Jones)

The architectural profession also enjoyed success in the new century, with growing job opportunities to match a booming workload. While architecture remained prone to public controversy, it probably stood as high in public interest and esteem as at any time in living memory. The profession attracted notably bright school leavers whose academic quality was the envy of cognate disciplines. Brisk demand for building work was to be seen in crane-laden city skylines, renewal of school and health buildings, and much else. Large architectural practices thrived and smaller practices proliferated; architectural education, under RIBA and ARB surveillance, fed a bullish market for design skills.

Opportunities for young graduates with conceptual, building detail and communication know-how were seldom, if ever, greater.

Ubiquitous computers and the formidable technical complexity of building codes bolstered the role of young graduates having up-to-

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date knowledge. They could bring useful new skills to an office and sometimes even outfl ank the hardened professionals. After ten or more very good years, the question before the profession was how long the party would go on.

New man for new times

Phillip Jones (WSA)

Malcolm Parry’s successor as Head of School early in 2002 was a genial physicist, Phillip Jones. This choice of a non-architect was novel, but less so than it appeared since he had deep experience of the School and of aspects of building design. Born in South Wales and grammar school educated, he had started studying engineering at University College Cardiff before moving to physics and specializing in acoustics. Joining Pat O’Sullivan’s group in 1977, he researched building energy and environment, being appointed a new blood lecturer (one of two in the field in the UK) in 1984.

With the retirement of Derek Poole ten years later, Phil Jones went on to become Professor of architectural science. Asked about his rise through the ranks, he paid especial tribute to Pat O’Sullivan and Richard Silverman among many colleagues to whom he owed much. A realist, he saw problem-solving as normality, as a continual process, rather than as exceptional, an intermittent punctuation of periods of calm. An unruffled exterior and easygoing manner went with acceptance of risking mistakes.

Impressions of affability did not necessarily hinder decisiveness.

After three decades the Project Office was unceremoniously discontinued in his early days as Head. The pace of change was kept up and early priorities soon became clear: to grow funded research, PhD numbers and taught masters courses, and find new staff. All this was on home ground for an experienced research scientist, but Phil Jones was also sensitive to the particular needs of the taught architecture course. As a non-architect he delegated responsibility for this major area.

They could not stay away: reunion of graduates of 1975, Bute Bulding 2005.

(V. Kuksa)

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An architect as Deputy Head was the answer, making a new post in the School. Fellow Welshman Wayne Forster was the choice, a graduate of the School, on staff since 1992 and with wide experience ranging from technology and year five design teaching to running the Design Research Unit. A forceful interrogative teaching style had attracted many students to his cause. His unusually wide interests were rooted in live construction operations as much as design and research and were enriched by Dean Hawkes’ influence. Working with Phil Jones, Wayne Forster was champion of design and teaching in a research-driven context. To this role he brought an unusual ability to initiate and take an entrepreneurial stance. Traditionally this had not been overly common among academics, but was fast becoming essential in order to prosper in an increasingly commercial climate. It also fitted well with the thrust of Phil Jones’ aims.

‘We felt ok about current [2005] standards in the School until we were informed that what we thought was fth year work was actually produced by third year students. Sobering!’

(Graduate of 1975 speaking in 2005)

Blossoming life beyond teaching A range of School activities blossomed. There was a new level of involvement with academic journals, international conferences and courses for professional and allied groups. Support in fostering knowledge came from research in all its forms, from solitary scholarship to jointly-funded multidisciplinary team work and from consultancy to PhD supervision. Never had it been more important for the School to hold its own in comparison with other subject areas and other schools of architecture. It was a scene far from the groves of academe allegedly once peopled by impractical souls given to leisurely pursuit of their personal research and strangers to time management and budgeting. From that state of primeval innocence, research had evolved into a sharply competitive activity dominated by need to win funding bids, convince journal referees and deliver right findings at the right time. Research had much in common with design projects including the need for creativity and tenacity.

Co-ordinating research and other activities and relating them to the university was a job in itself, undertaken with some gusto by Annie Golledge who coped with a School organization chart with 34 interrelated bodies on it. Amid the challenges of research Phil Jones was clear about where opportunities lay. In his own field the key theme remained sustainability in its various forms. The built environment was politically topical and concerns about global resources were seldom far away. Sustainability married political interest (and funding) and design know-how (in which the School was expert). Design decision-making was seen as bringing together various academic disciplines in the School and in other parts of the University, such as engineering and behavioural sciences, as well as outside interests. In this way design for sustainability pointed the way for research initiatives intended to advise policy makers and decision makers. There were now opportunities actively to set the research agenda, to determine what to do as well as to do it, rather than unquestioningly responding to others’ research wants.

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Draughtsmanship today I: design for Porto Water Tanks Competition by P. Henshaw, C. Wilkins, G. Roach and R. Stevens, drawing by P. Henshaw, 2008).

(P. Henshaw)

Draughtsmanship today II: MArch ďŹ nal design project for an archaeological residential centre, Lyme Regis, by Chris Wilkins, 2007.

(C. Wilkins)

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A rare chance was emerging for a school of architecture to exert real influence on real events of substance. At the same time the level of design appreciation in Wales (seldom too high) maybe also could be lifted.

There were too many research projects for comprehensive treatment to be given here. To convey an impression of them, one year is taken at random. CRiBE’s technical officer in 2003, Debbie Flint, could point then to ten years work on urban sustainability.

World-leading environmental tools had been developed to study energy use, traffic flow and pollution management as well as relationships between the built environment and public health. Researchers in these fields included Jo Patterson and Simon Lannon. Closely connected was work on prediction of building performance which included HTB2 and Ecotect software associated with Don Alexander, Ian Knight, Huw Jenkins, Andrew Marsh and Spyros Stravoravdis. They and many others also worked on other projects with the wind tunnel and sky dome, and on air conditioning, energy use, renewable energy systems and thermography surveys. Then again there were projects on waste minimization and environmental management carried out by Angela Langley, Yan Wang and Lara Hopkinson.

Five years on, in 2008, commercial manager Huw Jenkins oversaw a CRiBE project portfolio which included more of the work above, but expanded to include geographic information systems, energy modelling, studies of a virtual village for development of sustainable settlements, solar thermal absorption cooling systems and exploration of LED technology. Sustainability now included projects on BREEAM assessments, collaboration with Tianjin University, China, in masterplanning the Yu-jia-bao peninsula and in building energy performance. CRiBE led an EU-funded international consortium on a housing strategy for Xi’an, China and there was also a study for the Pearl-Qatar artificial island venture. UK joint projects included Sustainable Design of the Built Environment (SuDOBE) with BRE, the Welsh Assembly Government and newly appointed Professor Chris Tweed. Another venture was the Wales Energy Research Centre (WERC), a partnership with a group of other Welsh universities. Then again there was the Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI), to fund large energy projects, which came from a proposal by the School to the Welsh Assembly Government.

This £5 million initiative with four universities was just the sort of move seen by Phil Jones as a future direction for research.

Growth of architectural science research was paralleled on a different scale by DRU-w, under Wayne Forster. By 2008 it had gained planning consent for sustainable building projects to the value of £30 million, employing six young graduates of the School in an office in the south east corner of the Bute Building. In the pipeline were many DRU-w research and consultancy projects

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involving design, among them the development of a timber housing system for rural Wales. As evidence that DRU-w contributed more than thoughtful and lively building design, symposia were organized on construction methods. In 2007 DRU-w was shortlisted for Building Design’s young architect of the year award.

DRU-w live project: affordable housing, Oxford Street, Cardiff, providing 104 fl ats in a perimeter block development, designed 2006-7.

(DRU-w)

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A quite different type of research was brought to Cardiff by Adam Hardy with his Practice, Research and Advancement in South Asian Design and Architecture centre (PRASADA). It soon became a serious contender when it won £500,000 funding to study Indian temples. Nearer home was the continuing work of CEBE in supporting education in the built environment field by disseminating good practice, events, publications and pedagogic research. As well as these groups were individuals and loose alliances of researchers in architectural history and theory and a few in architectural practice. There was a steady stream of books and articles from many staff, not least Sarah Lupton and Richard Weston. Other aspects of the intellectual life of the School came in different shapes and sizes. The first research conference for PhD and masters level students was held in 2003. The following year brought an international conference entitled ‘Primitive’, followed by one more enticingly called ‘Quality’. Another contribution was in scholarly periodicals. The international journal Construction History, long jointly edited by Christopher Powell, was joined by the prestigious Architectural Research Quarterly edited by Richard Weston from 2004. In the same year (evidently a good one for literary efforts) a new journal Made first appeared under Adam Sharr’s direction. True to its title Made was intended to reflect ‘…interest in making: the physical crafting and joining as well as intellectual making’.

From physical crafting to intellectual making, such was the wide scope of research under way in the School. By 2008 it could fairly be said that research was now bigger, more diverse, far-reaching and ambitious than ever before.

Year four summer short course: Christopher Powell (right) keeps students busy with a sketch design.

(WSA)

A timeless scene: critting in the south corridor, Emily Hall (left) explains her year four project before visiting critic and staff, 2007.

(WSA)

Teaching ‘a particularly attractive opportunity’ Phil Jones saw that a right balance between research and teaching was essential. Also important was to find within teaching a balance between design, architectural science and the humanities. Balance depended on how School resources were allocated, meaning how intellectual capital was deployed. People and what they did were the currency in which balance was to be found. That is to say, pragmatic considerations about staff and their abilities were rated high among more theoretical considerations about architecture and education.

The long-standing two-tier degree structure continued broadly unchanged: a three year BSc complete in its own right for students wanting a design-based education, followed by a more vocational two year second degree leading to a professional qualification.

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Creativity in progress: work in the studio, 2007.

Furniture and drawing equipment changes; the clutter is eternal.

(WSA)

The range of skills conveyed by the BSc remained similar to those of a decade earlier and already outlined above. The list was now a little simpler and with less on subjective feelings and personal artistic vision (evidence of a swing of the architectural education pendulum?). Although simpler, the list of concepts to be grasped was still impressive, and arguably a glory of the subject. The mix of studio project work, lecture-based courses and study visits would not have been unrecognisable three or more generations earlier, although of course the content had changed profoundly. Compared with only a generation earlier it seems that course content had veered somewhat away from the technical and practical towards the conceptual. A novel introduction in 2007 was escape from the University’s irksome two semester academic year. Reversion to a three term pattern freed time for research-led summer project options with combined BSc student years.

The well-tried BArch or second degree, with minor changes, became an MArch from 2006. Entry standards to BArch year one (fourth year) had been upgraded several times and the new MArch now required at least a 2.2 honours classification. Some students from other schools were normally accepted directly into the second degree course, bringing with them some refreshingly different views. The three aims of the MArch were to extend design experience to more complex buildings and urban design, to study aspects of practice, and to pursue specialisms grounded in research methods. There were four course components, namely education in practice, a dissertation (the one-time ‘special subject’), a comprehensive building design, and lecture-based modules. Like the BSc, the MArch did not differ much in basic structure from a decade earlier, although within a robust framework many changes had been made.

Alterations in year four included new academic design work and modular taught courses, all based on distance learning. Fourth year students continued to work in widely-scattered offices: enough in Australia in 2007 for a block course to be held there, with help from the University of Sydney School, rather than back in Cardiff.

Year two of the MArch (fifth year) began with an urban design project, in 2007-8 the option of Copenhagen or Shanghai. This was followed by a primer project in which each student was free to define their own architectural position: to commit to a design idea or standpoint. Questions posed by the primer were then tackled in the all-important design thesis. These were grouped into thematic studios, each led by a different member of staff, under such subjects (some with oracular titles) as the everyday, cities, new-into-old, landscape and place, nature, people, permanence, senses, and tectonics. Thesis designs were expected to integrate all aspects of design: cultural, contextual, philosophical, economic, technological and all. If this left room for narrow overspecialization (which was unlikely) there was compensation in 2006 in mind-broadening

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exchanges and joint projects with the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University, China. The vast scale of Tongji reminded Cardiff staff of the size of the international competitive challenge. It was fitting that The Times gave reassurance that Cardiff was overall best UK school of architecture and ‘looks a particularly attractive opportunity’ for school leavers.

Taught masters level courses did not stop with the new MArch and the firmly-established MSc in Environmental Design. A whole suite of courses was running by 2008 and students on them totalled roughly the same number as an undergraduate year. An initiative which had begun with a solitary MSc had matured into seven separate programmes which had attracted applicants from over 40 countries in four years. The new courses in addition to those mentioned above were: -

MSc in Energy and Environmental Performance Modelling (2005)

-

MA in Urban Design (2005, jointly with the University School of City and Regional Planning)

-

MSc in Sustainable Energy and Environment (2005, jointly with the University School of Engineering)

-

MA in Architecture: Professional Studies (2006, supplementing the Part 3 Professional Practice examination)

-

MSc in Theory and Practice of Sustainable Design (2006).

Not only more masters courses, but one at a great distance: a new partnership arrangement enabled the Cardiff MSc in Environmental Design to be offered also at the British University in Dubai.

Teaching involved more people over more diverse subjects than ever and they needed suitably expanded facilities to support them. In the face of rising needs, any improvements to accommodation and equipment were like chasing a receding target, with space in the Bute Building as tight as ever. The School now occupied (or over-occupied) the entire main upper floor (a little space was sometimes shared with other users).

The smaller fl oor above, in the centre block, was occupied

by Head of School, administration and research while part of the ground level was filled with wind tunnel and laboratories.

Competition among staff for planned and impromptu teaching spaces, with many separate courses run to differing timetables, could be problematic. In the face of overcrowding, a fullyequipped workshop was set up in a room off the west corridor

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Competition entry: work

by P Henshaw, C Wilkins, G Roach and R Thomas for RSAW ‘Learning Curve’ school design competition, 2007.

(P. Henshaw, C. Wilkins and G. Roach)

in 2004, giving a boost to model making skills. A year later a timber-built mezzanine studio extension was added along the west corridor by DRU-w architect Steve Coombs.

Staff gains – and losses Staff changes were brisk, recalling the late 1980s and early 1990s when a group of experienced people retired at about the same time. Staff who joined in the period beginning in 2003 were Jacob Hotz from Zurich, and two lecturers from the Nottingham School, Paola Sassi and Adam Sharr, a Cardiff graduate. The

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following year Allison Dutoit from Copenhagen and Berkeley was appointed lecturer as were Monica Cherry, another Cardiff graduate, and Adam Hardy from De Montfort (he had also lectured at Cardiff in the mid-1980s). From this time Marga Munar Bauza, with Spanish and local Cardiff experience, became a Professional Tutor. Andrew Roberts, a graduate of Cardiff and Strathclyde, working with CEBE and its predecessor since 1995 shared more time teaching. In this period, too, Visiting Professors were appointed: Edward Jones of Dixon Jones (a long time friend of the School); Pankaj Patel and Andrew Taylor of Patel Taylor; and Pierre d’Avoine of Pierre d’Avoine Architects. The pace of change continued into 2006 with four more new arrivals: Peter Salter as part-time Professor (and already a frequent visitor); Mhairi McVicar with American and London experience; Cristian Suau from OMA, Rotterdam; and Sarah Nicholas, a librarian who complemented part-timer Sylvia Harris. There was no slackening in 2007 when three more new faces appeared. Wassim Jabi came from New York, Stephen Kite came from Newcastle-upon-Tyne University, and Cardiff graduate Professor Christopher Tweed came from the post of Head of Queen’s University, Belfast, School. The most recent lecturer appointments were Clarice Bleil De Souza and Spyros Stravoravdis, both promoted internally from research posts.

‘… lled with moments of inspiration and despair, and struggles with deadlines followed by brief periods of respite and bliss. It was all worth it!...I now feel thoroughly educated in architecture’.

(Graduate of 2005)

Of those who left in the same period, Dean Hawkes retired in 2002. In the following year Simon Unwin left to head the Dundee School, echoing Chessor Matthews’ move nearly half a century earlier. In 2004 Sophia Psarra left for Michigan and Bob Fowles retired after 32 years at the School. Malcolm Parry and librarian Sylvia Harris both retired in 2005. Monica Cherry also left in 2005, for London, and Andrew Marsh and Flora Samuel left in the following year. Judi Loach swapped university departments in 2006, a year before Christopher Powell retired after 35 years at the School, and Paola Sassi left for Oxford Brookes.

An RIBA visiting board in 2008 was greeted by a total of 64 academic staff. This figure included a few part-timers, but excluded the many external tutors and critics. In all there were four full-time Professors, three Readers, fourteen Lecturers (including Senior Lecturers and Fellows), eleven Research Associates and twelve Research Assistants. Numbers were rounded off by four Visiting Professors from architectural practice, two Visiting Fellows, and Professional Tutors, librarians, a graphic designer and others.

Four fifths of the teaching staff had been educated outside Cardiff; the School did not often devour its own. The average age of teachers and researchers was a little over 40 years, several years younger than in 2002; 44 per cent of academic staff were women. Administrative and other support staff took the School total to about 80, including secretarial, reception, computer and workshop staff and long-serving facilities manager Dave Bull.

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‘…it was an opportunity for a different learning experience. The shorter course is a great advantage…it’s tried and tested: hard work, but a good course. It is really friendly and helpful and the help from tutors is great. I feel integrated’.

(Direct entry student, MArch 2008)

New staff had been appointed first to bolster design and teaching, and then later to do the same for research. The extent of staff change under Phil Jones as Head was more sweeping than at any time before and it created some novel conditions. Women came to monopolize BSc year chairmanship for the first time in 20067 (Allison Dutoit, Mhairi McVicar, Juliet Odgers). There were many more teaching staff with overseas experience in education and practice while staff with long Cardiff experience became scarce. The impact on the culture of the School was obvious.

With less transfer of know-how and lore between old hands and newcomers came new ways and a more cosmopolitan atmosphere.

Long-standing behaviour and attitudes played a smaller part than hitherto: shared values and experience could no longer be taken for granted. The emerging organization was likely a livelier place where more diverse ideas mingled and clashed and tradition faded.

Yet some forces making for continuity still remained, with those uppermost in the hierarchy well steeped in the customary ways of the School.

More students, and better?

For the staff en masse to transform themselves over a few years was unusual, but of course students did so routinely. They came and went seasonally (like farm crops, someone once remarked), always changing, yet somehow always the same. Or nearly the same. Now they grew more numerous with new masters courses and for the same reason a little older on average. With more short courses, one-off events and options, their attendance became less regimented (for a few, attendance had always been irregular). Distinctions between term and vacation, day of the week and time of day, became blurred as the pulse of the School was driven more by the individual actions of self-directed people, and less by rigid timetables; life was freer and more varied. This was but another way of saying that students were becoming (in at least one sense) more responsible for their own individual actions.

There were other changes among the students. First was growing cosmopolitanism from wider international origins and travel. For example, of the 84 first year entrants in 2004 there were eight different nationalities, among them Malaysian, Chinese, Greek, Korean and Polish. Advance on one front brought some retreat on another, with proportionately fewer Welsh students (and rather more from southern England). Another change among students was the long-term trend for more women to enter the course, with numerical equality at last attained by middecade. Again, there were higher academic entry standards, with minimum entry levels gradually ratcheted up over the years. A typical acceptance offer came to be based on three ‘A’ grade A-levels, preferably balanced between arts and sciences, together with a small graphic portfolio.

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Summing up, there were more students and they were more responsible, footloose, female and academically able. Just as important, they remained as spirited and colourfully idiosyncratic as ever. Evidence was all about: enough here to cite two examples: in orthodox terms, BSc undergraduate 2008 Olympic bronze medallist, Bryony Shaw; in less official terms, the curious practice of table jousting, an arcane nocturnal pastime said to flourish in the Bute Building.

Latest directions At the time of writing the School had been led by a non-architect for about seven years. Unique for Cardiff, but not among UK schools, this sometimes raised eyebrows. Phil Jones was entirely unapologetic and with good reason, both The Times and Independent had recently put the School in first place. While taking care to listen and to delegate responsibility on specifically architectural matters, he pointed to the advantage of his having much experience of the ways of academic and research organizations worldwide. Besides, he would add, as an environmental scientist he also had direct involvement with building design as in, say, Switzerland and in the Middle East where he worked on an Innovation Network award winning tower in Dubai.

Under Phil Jones’ guidance research activity had advanced boldly.

To be sure, taught courses at BSc and MArch levels had also opened out under Richard Weston and the drive of Wayne Forster. But it was research which generated much of the glamour and prestige of big money, distant contacts and palpable impact on live events.

The identity and contribution of the School and, importantly, how it thought about itself was influenced at so many points by research. The mantra ‘we are part of a research-led university’ was everywhere to be heard. Overseeing this growing emphasis Phil Jones was quick to praise what he termed the incredible support from many unexpected places which had helped him. He urged staff to take the widest view of what the School might do and might be, rather than to shelter in the comfort of narrow academic preoccupations. His view, and that of his deputy, was resolutely outward-looking.

High life: poster for the SAWSA ball, 2006.

(WSA)

‘The School is not short of characters’.

(Support staff, 2008)

The future direction in which the Head sought to propel the School was towards world-class significance. Asked what he would like to be remembered for in due course, Phil Jones unhesitatingly replied with international ambitions, seeing opportunities for initiatives and cooperation at world level. Lest this sounded wishful thinking, the School already had a strong reputation for effective delivery and there were recent successes with great potential. Under Phil Jones the School did not lack strategic ambition.

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Shipeng Zhang, 2008.

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AFTERWORD

What did it all add up to?

This narrative began with a School of eight students and one staff.

Nearly nine decades later the respective totals are around 400 and 80. What can be distilled from this transformation? What can be said about the character of the School? What were the defi ning qualities in the way it was organized? Simple answers can hardly be expected from the tangle of historical cause and effect, but to raise the questions could promote useful debate and (maybe) understanding. Three snapshots of the School at different times follow before key themes are discussed.

Three snapshots By the mid-1930s the small School was soundly based, successful and had a close-knit culture and strong esprit de corps. To modern eyes it was slow changing, hierarchical and with subservient students. Defined by its Welsh connections and by boundaries with cognate professions and lay people, its sense of identity was of an enlightened ‘us’ among the uninitiated ‘them.’ Its function was conceived as transferring knowledge and skills to equip novices to join a local profession needing crafts-based architectural journeymen. A tolerant, catholic view of architecture was held in a School surrounded by supportive external institutions, other than an apparently obdurate University College.

Three-and-a-half decades later, about 1970, maturity was seen in university status, and greater size and participation at leading academic and professional levels. Research was founded alongside teaching: extending knowledge had become more prestigious than transferring it. External relations were kept up with many national organizations and informal networks. The role of a charismatic Head was to consult with senior colleagues, take initiatives, adjudicate between the few internal interest groups, and delegate routine management. Decision making was semi-transparent, formality declining and student status rising.

A generally tolerant and committed staff acted pragmatically. A sense of Welsh identity went with openness to exchange of people and ideas, tinged with scepticism towards the more pretentious and transient extremes of sophisticated architectural opinion.

Typical design work put balanced judgement and thoroughness ahead of startling innovation.

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Another three-and-a-half decades brings the time up to date. As a leading centre the School had international presence based in a vigorous university. External relations extended to government and funding agencies, media and networks in academe and professions. The growing influence of external bodies had raised the level of uncertainty in the School organization and hence raised management from occasional intervention to a continuous process of monitoring and response. Any confl ict between interest groups (CRiBE, DRU-w, etc.) was mild, partly due to well-integrated staff responsibilities which cut across group boundaries. The function of the School, fi guratively, had shifted from being a conduit channelling a fi nite body of craft knowledge, into an engine for generating and disseminating ideas to meet global environmental needs. Greater size needed good internal communications, although it was not always clear whether a business decision making model (centralized) or a collegiate model (consensus) was being used. A small management team led a structure of committees; below were interest groups, either flexible ad hoc and project-based, typically in research, or more permanent and process-based, typically in teaching. Although much decision making was devolved, tacit and informal management was slowly yielding to standard procedures and systems. Management of change was helped by growth, younger staff and high morale. A liberal, pragmatic intellectual climate appeared increasingly cosmopolitan and academic rather than professional architectural. A traditionally risk-averse outlook showed signs of weakening in favour of more initiatives. The proportion of women, staff and students, had reached near equality with men. Typical attitudes to design were in the architectural mainstream: tolerant while subject to practicability and realism and questioning towards what has been called the compulsive and competitive fashion parade of the London schools.

Themes arising These organizational snapshots suggest recurring themes helping to define character. The first theme, relations with external bodies, showed a broadening interface with the world.

New bodies appeared, such as research funders, while old ones, such as the profession, climbed from local to higher levels; the organizational context grew bigger, more complicated and demanding. All schools found this, but it was Cardiff’s response which perhaps was distinctive: being alive to emerging opportunities and challenges. Having spotted them they were turned to good effect, or at least their worst consequences averted: always a watchful eye. A linked theme was the primary function of the School, which grew from simple knowledge transfer to include its generation and exchange. Again, this was not unique to the School, but what stood out was the

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strong emphasis on research. The next theme was internal interest groups, which gradually multiplied. Overlapping staff responsibilities meant that almost all interest groups stayed comfortably within the School. This integration of interest groups connects with the next theme of control, communication and co-ordination. Heads typically retained power to initiate and mediate, more nearly resembling benevolent dictators than collegiate facilitators. A growing staff stressed vertical communication and tended to formal management processes, but management of change generally took place flexibly. If the School was distinctive it was in consensus; management was quite open and without much serious friction.

The fi nal theme, the School culture, or its shared values and beliefs, lay near the heart of its character. Culture is a necessarily nebulous concept, elusive, dynamic and loosely made up of various component parts. No single part was either unique to the School or individually necessary in defi ning its culture. Some parts overlapped and others might seem mutually incompatible.

Most applied at least to many of the people in the School, for much of the time. Six component parts or qualities are identified here. The School was pragmatic, with value placed on short- and medium-term practicability and utility rather than on millenarian visions or grand theory. It was also tolerant, liberal and open to the unfamiliar, while at the same time sceptical, preferring to proceed incrementally, and indifferent to fashionable ephemera.

Another part of the culture was that it was lean, focused, purposeful and integrated rather than fl amboyant, expansive and discursive. Associated with this, it was reticent, self-effacing and informal in its relations. Lastly, it possessed a strong sense of collective identity, in which Welshness and historical continuity rather than abrupt change were present.

One feature particularly characterized the School: the short (four year) course. This was, and remains, innovative and all but unique. Making good use of resources, it was developed pragmatically over time. In content it was steeped in the ethos of research. Highly intense, it concentrated staff and student activity and forced clarity and singleness of purpose. Even if inimical to fanciful extremes, it manifestly worked, and worked well. Above all, it expressed the confi dence and vitality to do in four years what others did in five.

Taken together, these themes, or something like them, made graduates accepted by the world as of a particular stamp: heavy hitters mostly, more than prima donnas; industrious producers rather than wild cards; well-informed and well-motivated; in all, very good people to have on your side in a war (or construction project). If, in the nature of things, not all of them could be visibly inspired, few indeed were unfit for purpose. The staff,

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most of them, were more inclined to thinking and writing than shouting and scheming. Less given to uncritical enthusiasm than being busily serious (and seriously busy), they were deeply committed and surprisingly supportive.

Beyond this attempt to pin down that which cannot be pinned down, there was always for the School a resonance with some words of Jan Morris. The Welsh national character, it was written, gave ‘a pull of kinship….it often does not show, but it is always there – an ancient stamp or shadow of comradeship….a tantalising community of instinct or temperament…’ So, too, for alumni of the Welsh School of Architecture, a diaspora stretching away to the Middle and Far East, to Australasia, America and mainland Europe as well as places between.

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APPENDIX

Chronology of Important Events 1920 School opens under Head William Purchon 1921 Second member of staff appointed 1923 RIBA recognises Part 1 course 1926 BW Thomas becomes first Cardiff student to join RIBA 1927 Building extension creates new studios 1928 RIBA recognises Part 2 course 1929 Student JB Wride wins RIBA Rome Scholarship 1931 RIBA recognises Part 3 course 1933 Olwen Price becomes first Cardiff woman student to join RIBA 1939 University College approves degree scheme 1942 Lewis John appointed Head 1953 Cardiff Technical College becomes College of Technology and Commerce 1957 College of Technology and Commerce becomes Welsh College of Advanced Technology (WCAT) 1960 Dewi-Prys Thomas appointed Head; town planning course opens 1962 Five year degree course starts 1966 Town planning made a separate department 1967 WCAT becomes University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST) 1968 Four year in house degree course (BSc plus BArch) starts 1970 Professor Patrick O’Sullivan appointed Professor of architectural science; Project Office opens 1975 Fire breaks out in roof 1979 Bute Building so named 1981 John Eynon appointed Head 1986 Richard Silverman appointed Head; two Design Professors appointed 105

1987 ‘Grey Book’ teaching reforms introduced 1988 UWIST merges with University College Cardiff and becomes University of Wales College of Cardiff; Derek Poole appointed Professor of architectural science 1992 School graded 5A in Research Assessment Exercise 1993 Sarah Lupton, first woman permanent lecturer, joins; wind tunnel set up 1994 Phillip Jones appointed Professor of architectural science; ESRU set up; HEFCW rates teaching excellent; MSc in Environmental Design starts 1995 CTI (later CEBE) founded; teaching modularized; two semester pattern replaces three terms; Professor Dean Hawkes appointed 1996 Bute Building refurbished; The Times rates School second in UK for all round excellence 1997 Malcolm Parry appointed Head 2000 DRU-w wins Corus International Design Award 2001 School graded 5A in Research Assessment Exercise 2002 Phillip Jones appointed Head; Wayne Forster appointed Deputy Head; Project Office discontinued; DRU-w wins RIBA Regional Design Award 2004 Cardiff University becomes independent of University of Wales; workshop opens 2005 Three new Masters courses start; studio mezzanine built 2006 MArch replaces BArch course; two new Masters courses start 2007 Building Design shortlists DRU-w for Young Architect of the Year award; three term pattern replaces two semesters 2008 School secures £5.1m. from HEFCW to lead Wales Low Carbon Research Institute; Independent rates School top in UK; The Times rates School top in UK for third year running

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APPENDIX

Teaching Staff Teaching staff listed alphabetically by family name. List includes full-time teaching staff, some part-time teaching staff and some research staff who undertook at least some teaching. Some dates are approximate and the list may not be comprehensive, particularly for earlier years and for staff who stayed for short periods. Start dates generally refer to appointment as staff rather than as research assistants, PhD students, etc. Heads of Department denoted by italics, and professors by *

Alexander, Donald, 1980 - present Allen, F Lyn, c.1946 - 1976 Barber, Vernon, 1964 - 1993 Bauza, Marga Munar, 2004 - present Carter, John, 1983 - 1987 Cherry, Monica, 2004 - 2005 Cole, Ray, c.1974 - c.1978 Cox, Stanley, 1966 - 1994 Davies, Ceri*, 1994 - 2001 Davies, Olbris, 1956 - c.1986 Davies, William*, 1988 - 1997 De Souza, Clarice Bleil, 2008 - present Dutoit, Allison, 2004 - present Evans, Richard, c.1970 - c.1972 Eynon, John*, 1951 - 1986 Fedeski, Michael, 1996 - present Forster, Wayne, 1992 - present Fowles, Robert, 1973 - 2004 Grajewski, Tadeus, 1994 - 2001 Grech, David, 1982 - 1986 Gwilliam, Julie, 2008 - present Hardy, Adam, 1984 - 5 and 2005 - present Harries, Michael, 1971 - c.1990 Harris, Sylvia, 1981 - 2005 (librarian, part-time teaching) Hartley, Richard, 1938 - 1977 (absent on war service) Hawkes, Dean*, 1995 - 2002 Hotz, Jacob, 2003 - present Jabi, Wassim, 2007 - present Jenkins, Huw, 1987 - present John, Lewis, 1924 - 1960

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Johns, Jeff, 1989 - 2002 Jones, David M, 1936 - c.1938 Jones, Donald H, 1960 - c.1985 Jones, Phillip*, 1977 - present Keay, Bernard, 1984 - c.1987 Kite, Stephen, 2007 - present Knight, Ian, 1987 - present Kretchmer, William, 1959 - 1963 Lannon, Simon, 1988 - present Leighton, David, 1972 - 1996 Lewis, Peter, 1971 - 1996 Light, Alfred, 1934 - 1936 Lipman, Alan*, 1963 - c.1991 Loach, Judi, 1994 - 2006 Longbone, John Manzeh, c.1968 - c.1973 Lowe, Jeremy, 1964 - c.1991 Lupton, Sarah, 1993 - present MacCallum, Charles*, 1986 - 1994 MacLean, A, 1931 - 1934 Markus, Tom, 1964 - 1966 Marsh, Andrew, 2001 - 2006 Matthew, Chessor, 1936 - 1957 (absent on war service) McVicar, Mhairi, 2006 - present Minter, Beaumont, c.1955 - c.1958 Moseley, Lyn, 1963 - c.1966 Odgers, Juliet, 1998 - present O’Sullivan, Patrick*, 1970 - 1988 Page, Eric, c.1923 - c.1925 Parnaby, Richard, 1982 - 1987 Parry, Malcolm*, 1968 - 2005 Patterson, Jo, 1997 - present Phillips, William, c.1941 - c.1943 Pollit, Kimball, c.1955 - c.1982 Poole, Derek*, 1988 - 1994 Powell, Christopher, 1972 - 2007 Powell, Greg, 1984 - 1997 Prytherch, William Tecwyn, c.1955 - c.1958 Psarra, Sophia, 1997 - 2004 Purchon, William, 1920 - 1942 Quantrill, Malcolm, c.1963 - c.1965 Quilliam, George, 1938 - c.1944 Richards, Ivor*, 1986 - 1995 Roberts, Andrew, 1995 - present Roberts, John, 1958 - 1993 Robson-Smith, Norman, 1991 - 2002 Salter, Peter*, 2006 - present Samuel, Flora, 1997 - 2006 Sassi, Paola, 2003 - 2007 Sharr, Adam, 2003 - present

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Silverman, Richard*, 1986 - 1999 Singleton, David, 1984 - 1997 Starling, LB, c.1941 - c.1943 Stravoravdis, Spyros, 2008 - present Suau, Cristian, 2006 - present Thomas, Dewi-Prys*, 1960 - 1981 Thomas, Fred, 1959 - c.1985 Tranter, Robert, 1969 - 1995 Tweed, Christopher*, 2007 - present Unwin, Simon, 1983 - 2003 Vaughan, Nigel, 1984 - 1997 Weston, Richard*, 1982 - 1986 and 1999 - present Wilkinson, Kathryn, 2001 - present Winder, Richard, 1921 - c.1931 Woolley, Les, c.1976 - c.1985

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Teaching Staff Arranged Chronologically by Date of Appointment

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APPENDIX

A Note on Sources

A starting point was provided by histories of other schools of architecture such as: J Devine (ed.) 100 Years of Architecture at Notre Dame: a History of the School of Architecture 1898 – 1998, 1999; N Bartlett More Than a Handsome Box: Education in Architecture at the University of Michigan 1876 – 1986, 1995; and P Blundell Jones University of Sheffield School of Architecture 1908 – 2008, 2008. Blundell Jones was particularly useful since the first Head at Sheffield moved to Cardiff (it is regretted that the Sheffield School was able to be more help in writing about Cardiff than vice versa). Chapters 1 and 2 were much helped by survival of William Purchon’s press cuttings collection, a series of books numbered from 0 to 8, kept in the Architecture Rare Books Collection.

These hold extracts from Architect and Building News, Architects Journal, Builder, Design and Construction, and Journal of RIBA, as well as from Cardiff Times, South Wales Echo, South Wales News, and Western Mail, and also Times Education Supplement and some from national newspapers. Cardiff University Records and Institutional Archives (hereafter CURIA) contain some material under UCC/R/ RC/21. Details of Thomas Ellis came from Thomas E Ellis Speeches and Addresses, 1912. The press cuttings collection ends abruptly with Purchon’s death leaving Chapter 3 to be assembled from material in University College Prospectus (various years), CURIA Principal’s File P/L and P/12, SWIA Journal (various volumes), RIBA Journal Nov. 1960, and a fragment ‘WCAT: Official Opening of Extension’, 1961. These slender sources were augmented by personal communication with former students and the outcome of a reunion held at the School in 2007. Chapters 4 and 5 relied on similar sources: SWIA Journal (various volumes), CURIA File TA14, UWIST/WCAT Prospectus, 1968-9, and, from unidentified publications, Reports on the School by Dewi-Prys Thomas, 1973 and 1974, and his obituary by John Eynon. An informative source was ‘Welsh School of Architecture: Report to the UGC’, 1986, as were BSc in Architectural Studies Handbook 1984 – 85, and Welsh School of Architecture 1986. Personal communication with Pat O’Sullivan and other former staff and students was very useful. From Chapter 6 onwards a growing quantity of publications produced in the School was available, as were valuable discussions with former Heads, beginning with Richard Silverman. Main publications drawn

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upon were ‘Welsh School of Architecture Project Work 198788’ (the Grey Book), 1987; Welsh School of Architecture University of Wales, 1994; ‘Self Appraisal for RIBA/ARCUK Visit 1-2 Dec. 1994’, 1994; Annual Review 1996; and Handbook 1996 – 7: Research and Postgraduate Courses, 1996. An article appears in Architects Journal 20 March 1991. Chapter 7 was based in part on discussion with Malcolm Parry and personal communication with staff and former students. The main School publications used were: Annual Review (various years); Undergraduate Handbook, 1997; Postgraduate Handbook, 1997; Research Handbook, 1997; and Centre for Research in the Built Environment, n.d. Chapter 8 relied on discussion with Phillip Jones and on a wealth of published material, the main items of which were: Undergraduate Prospectus, 2001 and 2004; Welsh School of Architecture Exhibition 2002-3, 2003; Research Handbook, 2003; Centre for Research in the Built Environment: the Welsh School of Architecture, 2003 and 2008; MSc in Environmental Design of Buildings: the British University in Dubai, n.d.; and Sustainable Architectural Design Joint Studio 2006: Cardiff University UK and Tongji University China, 2006.

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INDEX Page numbers appearing in bold refer to illustrations.

A Accommodation 43 aims see educational aims Albery, Ian 77 Alexander, Don 47, 69, 91 Allen, FG ‘Lyn’ 23, 30, 33, 50 Alsop and Stormer 77 ‘Architectural Research Quarterly’ 92 architectural science 41, 46, 52, 65, 66, 82, 91 Arup 77 Atkins, Miss 6 awards 12-3, 18, 31-2 B Ball, annual see dance Barber, Vernon 41, 67, 68 Barton, PG 36 Bauza, Marga Munar 97 Beavan, Peter 54 Bennetts, Rab 77 Bishop, John 18, 18 Brandstetter, Klaus 41 Brawne, Michael 77 British Architectural Students Association 39 Bulkeley, Paul 77 Bull, Dave 97 Buro Happold 77 Bute Building 31, 48, 67, 95 C Cardiff Architectural Design Club 1 Cardiff Technical College 2, 6, 16, 17, 31 Cardiff University 87 Carter, John 54, 67, 68 CAT 31, 40, 46

CEBE 82, 92, 97 see also CTI Cherry, Monica 97 club, students see SAWSA Cole, Ray 50 College of Technology and Commerce 31 see also Cardiff Technical College computers 58, 67, 80, 81 see also information technology ‘Construction History’ 92 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) 58 Coombs, Steve 96 Corbett Road studios 67 core projects 62, 78 course content 40, 94 see also course structure course structure 32, 62-3 see also course content Cox, Stanley 41, 58, 67, 68, 69 CRiBE 66, 82, 91 CTI 67, 82 see also CEBE culture of School 98, 103 curriculum 10-1, 17 see also teaching ‘Cymrarch’ 84 D Dance, annual 6, 19-20, 23, 24, 27, 35, 56, 99 Davies, Bill 69, 77 Davies, Ceri 36, 66, 68, 77 Davies, Olbris 34, 54 d’Avoine, Pierre 97 DEGW 77

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Deputy Head 89 design creativity 28 design projects see projects Design Research Unit see DRU-w De Souza, Clarice Bleil 97 Double Elephant Club 32-3, 45 draughtsmanship 9, 32, 70, 80, 90 dress code 35 DRU-w 82, 89, 91-2 Dubai, British University in 95 Dutoit, Allison 97, 98 E Educational aims of 1998 77, 78 explicit 70 Grey Book 63 MArch 94 Parry’s 76 Purchon’s 10, 11, 17 Edwards, Ivan Prys 45 Ellis, Thomas 1 Ely public library 58 employment 5, 26-7, 36 entry requirements 4, 43, 94, 98 entry standards see entry requirements ESRU 66, 82 examinations 11, 45 Eynon, John 34, 53, 53, 59-60 F Facilities 48, 58, 67, 80, 95 Fedeski, Mike 69 fire, in School 46 Flint, Debbie 91 Forster, Wayne 55, 69, 70, 82, 89, 91, 99 Foster Associates 77 four year course 49-50, 63, 103

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Fowler, Pauline 54 Fowles, Bob 43, 50, 67, 82, 97 funding 61, 63 G Golledge, Annie 89 Gordon, Alex J 19, 34, 36, 40 Goss, Anthony 43 Gough, Piers 54 Grajewski, Tad 69 Grech, David 53, 68 Gregynog 68 Grey Book 62-3 H Haifa 67 Hardy, Adam 54, 92, 97 Hare, Nicholas 77, 84 Harries, Mike 48, 50, 55, 55, 58, 67, 68 Harris, Sylvia 58, 64, 97 Hartley, Richard 23, 30, 50 Hawkes, Dean 68, 70, 79, 80, 82, 97 HEFCW 64, 72 higher degree students 83 History and Theory 66, 82-3 HLN 77 Hodder Associates 77 Hopkinson, Lara 91 Horwood, Bert 68 Hotz, Jacob 96 HTB2 66, 82 human studies 47, 52 I Information technology 64 see also computers intellectual climate 52 Iwan, Dafydd 45

J Jabi, Wassim 97 James, Colin 45 Jamil, Eleena 77 Jenkins, Huw 69, 91 John, Lewis 3, 29, 33, 38 Johns, Jeff 69 Jones, Alwyn 58 Jones, David M 23, 48 Jones, Donald H 35, 43, 54 Jones, Edward 77, 97 Jones, Phillip 50, 66, 67, 87, 88, 88, 89, 98, 99 K Keay, Bernard 54, 67, 68 King Kong 84, 84 Kite, Stephen 97 Knight, Ian 69, 91 Kretchmer, William 34, 41 L Langley, Angela 91 Lannon, Simon 69, 91 LCRI 91 Leighton, David 50, 67, 68 Lewis, Gordon Associates 77 Lewis, HJ Whitfield 19, 20-1, 45 Lewis, Peter 50, 67, 68, 82 library, School 7, 32, 58, 64, 80 Light, AC 5, 23 Lim, CJ 77 Lipman, Alan 41, 47, 51, 65, 67, 68 Lloyd, T Alwyn 1, 3, 7 Loach, Judi 69, 97 Longbone, John Manzeh 41, 50 Lowe, Jeremy 41, 43, 47, 67, 68 Lupton, Sarah 69, 80, 92

M MA in Architecture: Professional Studies 95 MA in Urban Design 95 MacCallum, Charles 54, 67, 68, 70 MacLean, A 23 ‘Made’ 92 MArch 94 Markus, Tom 41 Marsh, Andrew 76, 91, 97 Matthew, Chessor, 23, 33 McAslan, John 77 McVicar, Mhairi 97, 98 Minter, BE ‘Monty’ 34 modernism 18 modularized course 64 see also modules modules 78 Morris, Jan 104 Moseley, Lyn 41 moving the School 46 MPhil in Architectural and Urban Design 80 MSc in Energy and Environmental Performance 95 in Environmental Design 64, 80, 95 in Sustainable Energy and Environment 95 in Theory and Practice of Sustainable Design 95 N Nicholas, Sarah 97 North Road 47, 65 O Odgers, Juliet 76, 98 O’Sullivan, Patrick 46, 47, 65, 67, 68 Owen, Dale 36

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P Paavilainen, Simo 54 Page, Eric 3 Park Place 46, 47 Parnaby, Richard 53, 68 Parry, Malcolm as Head 75, 76, 80 retires 85, 97 on staff 50, 67, 70, 74, 75 as student 45 Patel, Pankaj 97 Patel Taylor 77 Patterson, Jo 91 Penoyre and Prasad 77 Phillips, William 24 Pollit, Kimball 34, 34, 54 Poole, Derek 65, 66, 68 Powell, Christopher 50, 68, 92, 93, 97 Powell, Greg 69 PRASADA 92 Price, Olwen 5 primer project 94 Prince of Wales 72 prizes see awards Professional Methods 66, 82 Professional Practice examination 80 Project OfďŹ ce 35, 48, 58, 65, 82, 88 projects, design in 1920s 10-1 in 1950s 32 in 1960s and 1970s 43, 45, 48 in 1990s 70, 73, 78, 79 in 2007 94 and Project OfďŹ ce 58 in war 24 Prytherch, William Tecwyn 34 Psarra, Sophia 76, 97 pupillage 1,2

118 Index

Purchon, William death of 24 and early experience 2, 2, 3 and educational views 7, 9-11, 17, 24 legacy of 26-8 in School 22, 25 Q Quantrill, Malcolm 41 Quilliam, George 23 R RAE 65, 74, 83, 85 rag week 35 recruitment 64 Rees, Peter Wynne 77 Reid, Richard 54 research in 1970s 46, 47 in 1980s 58-9 in 1980s and 1990s 65-6 in c.2000 82-3, 85 foundation of 51-2 recent 89, 91-2 Research Assessment Exercise see RAE reunion 36, 88 RIBA 7, 12, 15, 17, 39, 61 Richards, Ivor 54, 67, 68, 70 Roberts, Andrew 97 Roberts, DW 19, 21 Roberts, John 35, 48, 58, 67, 68, 69 Roberts, WH 36 Robson-Smith, Norman 69 Rome Scholarship 12 RSAW 80, 82 see also SWIA Russell Group 87

S St Andrews Crescent 46 Salter, Peter 97 Samuel, Flora 76, 97 Sassi, Paola 97 SAWSA 6, 45, 56, 84, 99 Scard, HEA 21, 25 semesters 64, 94 Sharr, Adam 92, 97 Shaw, Bryony 99 Shedden, JR Sheridan 21 ShefďŹ eld University Department of Architecture 2 Sherrington, Stan 45 short course see four year course Silverman, Richard in 1987 67 appointed 62, 62 and engineers 66 personal qualities of 85 and RAE 65 retirement of 74, 76 Singleton, David 54, 68, 76 South Wales Institute of Architects see SWIA speakers see visiting lecturers sports 19, 35, 56 staff in 1960s and 1970s 50 in 1980s 53-5 in 1987 to 1990s 67-9 in 2000s 96-8 postwar 30 prewar 3, 23 wartime 24 Stanhope 77 Starling LB 24 Stravoravdis, Spyros 91, 98

students formality among 6, 37 numbers of 3, 4, 17, 24, 30, 31, 50, 56, 69, 77, 83, 98 social life of 6, 20, 35 and travel 19, 32, 56, 67 women 4, 5, 21, 31 see also employment studios 11, 22, 43, 55, 64, 67, 94 Suau, Cristian 97 SuDOBE 91 sustainability 66, 89 Sutherland, John 36 SWIA 1, 6, 7, 19, 20, 24, 27 see also RSAW Sydney University 94 T Taylor, Andrew 97 teaching assistants 77 part-time 66-7, 77 and research 47, 59 at the School 9, 32, 37, 48, 55, 62-4, 93-6 see also curriculum Technical College see Cardiff Technical College Thomas, Dewi-Prys 39, 39, 51, 51, 53 Thomas, Fred 34, 41, 54 Thomas, Percy 1, 3, 7, 12, 15, 16, 40 Thomson, Jim 41 Tianjin University 91 Tongji University 95 Town Planning course 33, 41, 43 Tranter, Robert 44, 50, 67, 68 Treatt, Joan 20, 21, 23 Trotman-Dickenson AF 61 Tweed, Chris 91, 97

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U ‘Undergraduate Handbook’ 77 University College 1, 7, 15-7, 37, 61, 65 University of Wales College of Cardiff see University College University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology see UWIST Unwin, Simon 54, 68, 97 UWCC see University College UWIST 46, 61 V Vaughan, Nigel 69 Vining, Jonathan 59 visiting lecturers 32, 45 visits, office 79 W Wall, LWD 21 Wang, Yan 91 war, effect of 23-4 Ward, JP 13, 16 Welsh College of Advanced Technology see CAT Welsh Housing and Development Association 1 WERC 91 Weston, Richard 53, 57, 68, 76, 92, 99 Williams, David 5 Willmore, OD 36 Wind tunnel 65, 66 Winder, Richard 3 Woolley, EL 50, 54 workshop 96 Wride, JB 12, 12

120 Index

The Welsh School of Architecture 1920-2008: a History This study charts the path of the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff, from its earliest beginnings over ninety years ago. The story is pursued from a small institution meeting local professional needs through a ďŹ fty-fold expansion into a major centre widely recognised as one of the leaders of its type in the UK. From origins before the First World War, the early educational aims, experience and growing academic successes are traced. From the nineteen twenties and thirties progress is charted through the difďŹ cult forties and on into the expansionary times of university status and research opportunities which followed. The distinctive impacts of successive heads of department are related, as the size and reputation of the School expanded. Restlessly changing parent institutions are plotted along with the response of the School’s internal organization to changing context. The story is brought fully up to the present with its international joint projects, wide range of specialist expertise and staff from many countries. An Afterword weighs up what gave the School its distinctive character and what helped to bring it to prominence in architectural education and research. Over 70 illustrations show people, places and architectural designs at the School, and Appendices give details of key events and staff.

122 Chapter 1