Architect was subject of hot controversy

Press, 24 August 1976, Page 13

Architect was subject of hot controversy

A New Zealand-born architect who made a sharp impact on English architecture in the 1930’s has died in England. He was Basil Robert Ward, who was 74. Mr Ward was born in Wellington. With his partners Amyas Connell and Colin Lucas he designed some of the first houses to be built in England it) the f 1 a t-roofed, white-walled style, “The Times” says in an obituary. His houses were often the subject of heated controversy when local councils found then too unfamiliar to be acceptable.

One of his houses — called High and Over — built at Amersham, represented British architecture at an exhibition in New York’s Museum of Modem Art in 1932. In 1973 it was listed as a building of historic importance.

His work provoked argument on the rights of architects to sit in judgement on each other’s work.

In 1939 the partnership was dissolved. After the Second World War Mr Ward was appointed to the chair of architecture at the Royal College of Art, a post that gave him no great scope as a teacher, says “The Times” because the college had no architects’ training school. From 1950 to 1953 he was the first Lethaby Professor at the college. After then he practised with various partners, designing for ' medicine, industry, and science, but “none of this work showed the freshness and esthetic vitality of his early houses.”

Mr Ward was “a founding member of the Modern Architectural Research Group, and served on the council of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1935 to 1938. He was elected a fellow in 1941.

He was also an honorary fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Architects and of the Royal College of Art. He leaves a widow, Beatrix, nee Connell, and two daughters.