Obituaries Independent
       Patrick Nuttgens
      Architect, broadcaster and founding Director of Leeds Polytechnic
      10 April 2004 Patrick John Nuttgens, architect, broadcaster, writer
and educationist: born Whiteleaf, Buckinghamshire 2 March 1930; Lecturer,
Department of Architecture, Edinburgh University 1956-61;Director,
Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York University 1962-68,
Professor of Architecture 1968-69, Honorary Professor 1986-2004; Hoffman
Wood Professor of Architecture, Leeds University 1968-70; Director, Leeds
Polytechnic 1969-86; CBE 1983; married 1954 Bridget Badenoch (six sons,
three daughters); died York 15 March 2004.

      Having distinguished himself in a fruitful university career,
Patrick Nuttgens crossed the binary divide in 1970 to become the founding
Director of Leeds Polytechnic. There he presided over the transformation
of a municipal college of technology into an institution of national
reputation. During his 15 years there he became an ardent apologist for
the polytechnic ethos. A man of many accomplishments - architect, gifted
artist, writer, scholar, broadcaster, television pundit and presenter,
raconteur - he was, at bottom, a teacher; inspired and inspiring, lively
and probing and ever challenging.
      He was one of a small band of people who, in the 1970s and
subsequently, helped, powerfully, to shape the polytechnic system,
restoring the intellectual challenge of the vocational, putting creativity
in the front line of higher education and battling to break down barriers
to innovation and opportunity in learning.
      Bearing the title "Director", he was never that. Routine matters of
management and administration were not his forte. He nurtured, he led by
example, he flung out and sought ideas, he stimulated. His style could be
unsettling to those who were comfortable with the routines of
administration, but his overall effect was undoubtedly effective.
      He came to Leeds from a remarkable background. His father was born
in Aachen and was brought to live in London from an early age. He became a
noted designer of stained glass and he and his family, including Patrick,
lived for a few years next to Eric Gill and his coterie of friends at
Piggotts (or Pigotts) in the Chilterns. Patrick's mother was Irish and an
accomplished mathematician. She died when he was seven. Pat grew up with
father, stepmother and 11 children.
      Brought up as a Roman Catholic, he was influenced and formed all his
life by his Catholic faith, though subject to crises of doubt and
questioning.
      At the age of 12, he contracted polio and was confined to hospital
bed for a year. It left him partially crippled and thereafter he was
troubled by pain and discomfort, borne with remarkable courage and good
cheer.
      Nuttgens went to Edinburgh College of Art to study architecture,
later transferring to a new joint course with Edinburgh University and
thus gaining his MA and completing his professional training. It was there
in his first year that he met Biddy Badenoch, whom he married in 1954. She
and Pat and their nine children (including a foster-child) made a
remarkable family. Biddy was a rock throughout their marriage and, during
the last 25 years of his life, as he became increasingly disabled, she was
his constant carer.
      In his final year at Edinburgh he met up with Robert (later Sir
Robert) Matthew, the brilliant architect then in his prime. Nuttgens
joined Matthew in the Department of Architecture at Edinburgh University
and lectured there until 1962, when he was invited to direct the Institute
of Advanced Architectural Studies at the new York University then being
established under Eric James. Nuttgens's work there was concerned mostly
with postgraduate courses for practising architects. It was innovative
work and had a significant impact upon the architectural profession. Had
Nuttgens been able to establish a Department of Architecture at York, as
he and Eric James wished, new paths in architectural education would
surely have been marked out.
      Nuttgens's impact and influence upon higher education have been
far-reaching. He regretted greatly what he felt to be the demise of the
polytechnics when they were absorbed into the hugely expanded university
system in the 1990s. He was persuaded that the articulation and further
development of the polytechnic system would have been highly beneficial
for the whole of higher education. He felt deeply that the philosophy and
ethos of polytechnic education, which he and others had worked assiduously
to establish and propagate, had been betrayed.
      He lectured widely, often brilliantly. His regular columns in the
Times Higher Educational Supplement were greatly appreciated. He was a
prime mover in the Education for Capability movement. His books on
architecture are authoritative and well regarded. A regular and frequent
contributor to Round Britain Quiz and A Word in Edgeways, he prepared and
presented some acclaimed television programmes. He was Chairman of the BBC
Northern Advisory Council from 1970 to 1975.
      Pat Nuttgens had a great gift for friendship and a great love of
life. He wore his learning lightly and could be relied upon to enliven any
discussion with wit and common sense. Small of stature, he was large in
every other respect; large-hearted; generous; encouraging; tolerant.
George Tolley
      As an architect able to communicate to a lay public, Patrick
Nuttgens had a rare and precious talent, writes Gavin Stamp. Both through
his writings and his associated television programmes, he did much to
encourage the current wide interest in architecture, both modern and
historical.
      "Simply from living in buildings, we all possess sufficient
expertise to embark on the study of the story of architecture," he wrote
disarmingly at the beginning of The Story of Architecture. This excellent
book, which went into two editions (1983, 1997), did not end with the
grand climax of modernism, as so many other general histories - like
Nikolaus Pevsner's - had done. Instead, Nuttgens recognised that the story
can never be concluded, that we now live in an age of pluralism, and that
architecture is much more than the satisfaction of basic functional needs,
for an important, constant human need is "for something more profound,
evocative and unusual - for beauty, for permanence, for immortality".
      In his equally useful Understanding Modern Architecture (1988),
Nuttgens looked at what had happened since the 1890s and attempted to
reconcile his Modern Movement training with experience by stressing the
importance of the public dimension and that "the isolated artist has no
role to play".
      Nuttgens's ability to break out of the introverted compound of
modern architecture and his catholic tastes owed much to his upbringing at
Piggotts Hill as the son of a stained-glass artist. It was this that
explained why he devoted so much time to Eric Gill in his contribution on
the Arts and Crafts movement, A Full Life and an Honest Place, in the
BBC's "Spirit of the Age" series broadcast in 1975. Other particular
heroes were Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Edwin Lutyens and Yorkshire's local
Arts and Crafts master Walter Brierley, but he recognised that they were
all helped by a social and economic climate which encouraged both
individuality and good workmanship: "There never was a better time for
door handles and window fasteners and cupboards and fireplaces and baths
and basins."
      Such observations reflected both Nuttgens's humane outlook and his
inherited suspicion of the grand manner. He was an early critic of
comprehensive redevelopment and systematised mass housing, and he examined
less authoritarian and more gentle alternatives in the BBC's 1989 series
of documentaries The Home Front: housing the people 1840-1990. In the
accompanying book, he concluded without regret, "Housing will never be the
vehicle for great architecture again."
      His first book, Reginald Fairlie, 1883-1952 (1959), was on a
Scottish church architect who was a traditionalist rather than a
modernist, and he was always deeply interested in sacred architecture. It
was, however, typical that in an enthusiastic review of the "most vital
and thrilling designs" by the Glasgow firm of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia for
new Roman Catholic churches in 1962 he felt obliged to point out "an
almost cavalier disregard for building construction and maintenance".
      Nuttgens's judgements were tempered by his Arts and Crafts
conscience but even more by his profound faith - which could be blinding.
He once sent me off to look at the new Roman Catholic cathedral in
Middlesbrough and I found a structure of painfully little merit surrounded
by car parks and supermarkets on the edge of that benighted city. But,
when I complained, he was quite unapologetic. 14 April 2004 14:09













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