Ivor Smith obituary

No postwar city embraced modern architecture in the 1950s as wholeheartedly as Sheffield, its 19th-century slums and recently war-damaged homes replaced by ambitious markets, shops, a new village in Gleadless Valley and towers of flats. Above all there was Park Hill, a single structure containing 994 flats, four pubs and a shopping parade, stretched along the hilltop above the station, four storeys at one end and 13 at the other making for a level roof line that powerfully conveys human dominance of the landscape.

It took two people to design it: Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith, who had met in London. Both were exploring concepts of long slabs, inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d』habitation, a design comprising flats, shops and a nursery that was built in Marseille in 1951 and symbolised Europe’s postwar revival.

Lynn had entered a competition for housing at Golden Lane in the City of London, while Smith produced a student thesis for rebuilding warehousing in Rotherhithe, as a single block with shops, pubs and housing. They resolved to work together and saw an opportunity with Sheffield city council, where the dynamic Lewis Womersley had been appointed chief architect to head a rebuilding programme. Two weeks later they were in post, and weeks after that started redesigning the 「little Chicago」 area above Sheffield station, given a free hand by Womersley, who adroitly steered the scheme through committees.

An underground walkway carried services across the site, including a system that conveyed refuse from every kitchen sink to the boiler house, while three walkways in the air served the flats, two of them touching the ground at the highest point of the hillside. These 「streets in the sky」 were wide enough for children to play on and for little milk floats and post vans to buzz along, making deliveries. The first occupier was a sociologist, who helped the residents to adapt to their new surroundings, while 12 caretakers were responsible for maintenance.

As vandals tore through housing estates in the 1970s, Park Hill stood out as a social experiment that worked. It was, however, in decline by the time it was listed in 1998 – Britain’s largest listed building until superseded by the Barbican. In 2004 the developer Urban Splash won a contract to revive the decayed estate. Smith embraced its radical new facades enthusiastically when the first phase was completed in 2013.

Smith left Sheffield in 1962 to join the architects and furniture designers John Morton and Tom Lupton in a partnership based in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. He produced another snake-like block, to shelter housing at Heston, west of London, from the M4 and Heathrow airport. He also designed housing at Winnersh, Berkshire, and in King Street, Cambridge. These he combined with a career in teaching, first at Cambridge, under Leslie Martin, where he formed a partnership with his brightest student, Cailey Hutton. They produced private houses, housing association schemes and small additions to Oxbridge colleges. A settlement for elderly people at Blewbury, Berkshire, and a priory at Willen, Milton Keynes, typified a specialism in small-scale contextual work. Another scheme of council housing in Sheffield, Baltic Wharf, was a victim of Margaret Thatcher’s expenditure cuts in 1980.

When, in 1968, students at University College Dublin occupied their studios in protest at their old-fashioned, poorly run architecture course, Smith was selected as its new head. He transformed it in four years, working with most of the existing staff while flying in visiting tutors from Britain, young practising architects who subsequently achieved renown, including Edward Jones, Derek Walker, Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan. Each would visit for two days a fortnight in a strategy dubbed 「the flying circus」. Smith loved Dublin, the students caught his enthusiasm and the local Hartigan’s pub became an extra studio.

He went on to head the highly technical Bristol School of Architecture until its closure in 1982. He then turned to Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, where he taught a course with the psychologist Peter Aspinall on ways of thinking about architecture, which informed his book Architecture an Inspiration (2014). He also founded the Caribbean School of Architecture in 1984 at the invitation of the Commonwealth Association of Architects, visiting each island before settling in Kingston, Jamaica, where he taught until 1999.

Ivor was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, the son of Yorkshire teachers, Flora (nee Housley) and Stanley Smith. His interest in architecture began when the family was evacuated to Belper, Derbyshire, and Ivor became fascinated by the rugged mills and churches of the Derwent Valley. His training at the Bartlett School of Architecture, evacuated from London to Cambridge, was interrupted by second world war service. Smith had been religious as a child, and remained a committed pacifist all his life, so turned to farming, labouring at Piggotts, the community created in the Chilterns by the sculptor Eric Gill. He met Audrey Lawrence, another evacuee studying in Cambridge, and they married in 1947.

Smith completed his degree course at Cambridge University then moved in 1950 to the Architectural Association, where he formed a group with Andrew Derbyshire (who was also to work in Sheffield), John Voelcker and Pat Crooke, all of whom produced theoretical schemes combining housing and other amenities that reflected the optimism of the immediate postwar years. But only Park Hill was ever designed with such scale of vision and care for its setting, the reason it deserves to survive.

Smith is survived by Audrey, their four children, Pippa, Karen, Piers and Zoë, and eight grandchildren.

• Ivor Stanley Smith, architect, born 27 January 1926; died 18 February 2018

Topics

Housing

Architecture

(Art and design)

Architecture

(Education)

Higher education

Sheffield

Communities

obituaries

Share on Facebook

Share on Twitter

Share via Email

Share on LinkedIn

Share on Pinterest

Share on Google+

Share on WhatsApp

Share on Messenger

Reuse this content

本文來源：https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/01/ivor-smith-obituary