| Obituary |
- https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/22/sir-colin-stansfield-smith
Sir Colin Stansfield Smith obituary
Visionary architect who created a radical new look for schools and public buildings
The Queen's Inclosure primary school, Cowplain, Waterlooville, Hampshire, designed by Stansfield Smith, which was opened in 1990
John Pardey
Mon 22 Jul 2013 18.03 BST
Sir Colin Stansfield Smith, who has died aged 80 after suffering a stroke, was responsible for changing the face of local authority architecture in Britain. In 1991 he was awarded the RIBA royal gold medal for creating some of the most successful and adventurous buildings in the country.
Arriving at Hampshire county council as county architect in 1974, he inherited a vast estate of public buildings: fire stations, old people's homes, libraries and schools. He created a new vision for schools in an age when the standardisation of design in the building boom of the 1960s remained prevalent. His so-called "big roof" schools in Hampshire began with Newlands primary school at Yateley in 1979. Large pitched roofs had an environmental driver, bringing in extra ventilation and light, and could not be further from the system-built flat-roof schools of the time.
In a shift away from big roofs, the Queen's Inclosure primary school in Cowplain, Waterlooville, opened in 1990, employed a light and airy open-plan arrangement set within an elegant steel shed. The following year, Colin's team produced an essay in timber, nestled into an east-facing slope below iron-age earthworks, with the Woodlea primary school in Bordon. This is like a small village of mono-pitched roofs clustering around a landscaped central space, with timber decks outside classes for children's study and play. It won a BBC design award. This diversity in style was entirely consistent for Colin, who was fond of being aligned with Isaiah Berlin's definition of a fox, who draws on a wide variety of ideas, rather than a hedgehog, who concentrates on one.
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Faced with bureaucratic systems when he started at Hampshire, Colin reorganised the office structure by creating multidisciplinary groups, with each handling a specific geographic area and responsible for all its existing buildings and projects regardless of type. He also put an immediate end to "box buildings". Colin used his natural persuasiveness to ensure public architecture would delight and enhance. A radical and wily operator in his dealings with county officers, he got his way by switching the agenda from design to aspects such as health and safety, energy use or maintenance.
Acting more like a private practice than a local authority office, Colin entered competitions and submitted work, such as the model for the sadly unrealised design for a school set within a walled garden in Pennington, to the Royal Academy. He also commissioned leading architects who further invigorated design development in Hampshire.
Although the schools claimed the limelight, Colin also invested in the county's rich heritage and continued this commitment as a trustee of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard after his retirement from Hampshire. He also saw public art as part of his remit, and in the late 70s and early 80s brought some of the country's greatest sculptors to Winchester with a series of public exhibitions – William Pye, Henry Moore and Elisabeth Frink, whose Horse and Rider statue still stands in the city.
Born in Didsbury, Manchester, Colin attended William Hulme's grammar school in the city. He then studied under Leslie Martin at the School of Architecture in Cambridge. After a spell working in the schools division of London county council, he went on to become a partner of Emberton, Frank and Tardrew before becoming Cheshire's deputy county architect (1971-73).
In parallel, he pursued a county cricketing career as CS Smith; at one point, his father, Stansfield Smith, and brother, Donald, were playing alongside him for Cheshire. He and Donald went on to play first-class cricket for Lancashire. After Colin married Angela in 1961, she suggested he use Stansfield Smith as his surname following a mix-up at the bank between him and another Colin Smith.
After leaving Hampshire county council, Colin became professor at Portsmouth University's School of Architecture in 1992 in the hope of bringing academia and practice closer. He designed their new School of Architecture building and continued his commitment to the environment by passing his knowledge to a new generation of young architects.
In my years working alongside Colin, first at Portsmouth School of Architecture and later on various projects, including a John Lewis store in Cambridge, he often referred to a project that seemed to summarise his approach – the Bridgemary community school in Gosport, completed in 1984. He took a bleak environment of system school buildings set in a sea of tarmac, surrounded by chain-link fencing, and tore up the fences and built walls to link the best existing buildings, centred on a courtyard, creating a compact campus, exemplifying "a walled garden, for growing children rather than just plants".
Colin was wise, generous, warm and driven. He had a competitive edge and hated losing, but remained intensely modest and was always happy to sidestep the limelight to see others succeed. He was knighted in 1993.
Colin is survived by his wife, Angela, and their children, Oliver and Sophie.
• Colin Stansfield Smith, architect, born 1 October 1932; died 19 June 2013
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1932 - 2013 (80 years) 
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