Maxwell Hutchinson
Professor Maxwell Hutchinson spoke on Thursday night in the School’s Stahl Theatre to an audience of pupils and invited guests. The annual Oundle Lecture, now in its fifth year, is given by eminent Old Oundelians, and is followed by a dinner which raises funds for a charity nominated by the speaker.
President of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1989 to 1991, practising architect, and regular radio and television broadcaster, Maxwell Hutchinson gave a lively, challenging and articulate talk on ‘council’ or social housing. In his his lecture he charted the post-war boom in construction of homes, to what he perceives now to be the catastrophic reduction of the social housing stock in Britain over the last 25 years.
Using the failure of the Ronan Point tower block in 1968 in London as an example, and also perhaps as a metaphor for collapse, Hutchinson criticised the newer lower density housing which replaced tower block architecture in the 1970’s, also suggesting that high density living is essential for a healthy city – cities need lots of people.
It was in the late 1980’s, and during Professor Hutchinson’s tenure as President of RIBA that the Prince of Wales’ public statements requesting a return to classical and traditional architecture provoked Hutchinson’s book The Prince of Wales: Right or Wrong?: An Architect Replies.
A former resident of both the Berrystead and Dryden House, Professor Hutchinson chose Architects for Aid as his nominated charity, a charity he founded following his personal experience of the Boxing Day Tsunami, and one dedicated to the global need for improved planning and project management in building shelter after natural disasters, famine and war.