Colin St John Wilson

Sir Colin St John ("Sandy") Wilson (14 March 1922-2007) was a British architect, lecturer and author. He spent 30 years progressing the project to build a new British Library, originally planned to be built in Bloomsbury and now completed near Kings Cross.

Wilson was born in Cheltenham, the son of Henry Wilson, Bishop of Chelmsford. His father was known as the "Red Rev" as a result of his sympathy for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Wilson was educated at Felsted School and studied architecture at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War, serving as a lieutenant in India. When his war service ended in 1946, he completed his studies at theBartlett School of Architecture at University College London, graduating as an architect in 1949.

He worked at the London County Council architects department after graduating, under the directorship of Sir Leslie Martin, alongside James Stirling, and Alison and Peter Smithson. He worked for a development company for a year before becoming a lecturer in architecture at Cambridge University, where Martin has been appointed Professor of Architecture. He retired from teaching in 1969 to concentrate on his architectural practise.

Wilson and Martin practised together as architects from offices in Cambridge, designing Harvey Court at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, which himself argues had an influence on Italian rationalist architecture, especially that of Aldo Rossi, and the Law, English and Statistical Libraries on Manor Road in Oxford, and other buildings in Cambridge and London. Wilson was commissioned to design the proposed Liverpool Civic and Social Centre, but the building was never finished, being deemed "fascist" by the council. He also designed an extension for the British Museum which was also never realised.

In terms of architectural production, Wilson is best-known for designing the current British Library building in London, began in 1962 and finally completed - after a sordid 25-year history of political wrangles, budget overspending and design problems - in 1997. He descrived it as his "30-year war". The original scheme would have created a piazza to the south of the British Museum, but would have required the demolition of a large part of Bloomsbury. After a public protest, a new site was found futher north, between Euston station and St Pancras station. A design was approved in 1978, but then delayed by the change of government after the 1979 UK general election, and ambitions were reduced amid rising costs. The architecture of the huge building is influenced by several sources: the surrounding Victorian architecture in the St Pancras area of London, the collegiate architecture of Cambridge University and, in the interior, the work of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.

He became a trustee of the Tate Gallery in 1974, and a trustee of the National Gallery in 1977, retiring from both positions in 1980. Wilson returned to Cambridge to become Professor of Architecture in 1975. He retired in 1989, since when he has been professor emeritus. He was a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Royal Academy. He was knighted in 1998. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Essex, Cambridge, and Sheffield. He was a visiting professor at the Yale School of Architecture in 2000.

More recently, Wilson designed the new Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, England. He donated his collection of 400 works of art, worth £5m, to the gallery, which opened in June 2006. The design of the gallery was shortlisted for the Gulbenkian Prize and RIBA Award in 2007.

Wilson married twice. He married Muriel Lavender in 1955, but they were later divorced in 1971. He married the architect Mary Jane Long, a founding partner of Long and Kentish architects, in 1972. They had a son and a daughter. He died at his home in Cambridge.

External links

• Pallant House Gallery website for pictures of the building
• British Library's architect dies, BBC News, 15 May 2007

References

• Sarah Menin and Stephen Kite, An Architecture of Invitation: Colin St John Wilson. Ashgate Publishing, 2005.
• Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 16 May 2007