14 May 180513 – A Sad Day

Posted at 07:19h in Architects by

The death of Will Alsop is a sad loss of a great architect and the Architects’ Journal’s tribute (link below) is a good one. He was born in Northamptonshire and proposed, against the philistines of Northampton, a terrific scheme for the riverscape of the town that would have made people sit up and pay a bit more attention to the benefits of Architecture with a capital letter rather than lowercase building design, which whilst more ‘inclusive’ includes a lot of very unsavoury non-professionals influencing the poor standard of design in the County:

‘Mischievous’ architect and artist Will Alsop dies aged 70

As a County we have produced, very occasionally, some wonderfully maverick architects (from even before it was a profession) such as Sir Thomas Tresham (Triangular Lodge etc.), Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (Portmeirion etc.). Lets hope Will will not be the last. As neither Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire or Rutland have a School of Architecture why doesn’t Northamptonshire set one up? We need more like Will Alsop to brighten our built surroundings.