About this talk

Running time: 39 minutes

Colin Stansfield Smith heads the leading centre for public architecture in Britain, the Hampshire County Architect's Department. Before he took over in 1974, the building programme was dominated by system-building, and there was little mature design talent in the department. He changed all that, designing some of the work with his own in-house teams, and commissioning other work from leading architects and consultants. The buildings emerging from his department have received many awards, and the department itself was awarded the Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1991.

A confirmed Modernist, he says in his talk that his architecture is about the caring tradition that was started by Aalto in Paimio. The work of his office has been about themes such as the celebration of pitched roofs.

For a long time Stansfield Smith was also Head of the School of Architecture at Portsmouth Polytechnic (now Portsmouth University) where he remains a Professor, and has designed the new school as well as the master plan for the new campus.

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