H.T. Cadbury Brown RA
Born: 20 May 1913
Elected ARA: 22 April 1971
Elected RA: 24 April 1975
Category of Membership: Architect
H. T. ‘Jim’ Cadbury-Brown looked set for a successful career when in 1937, aged 24 and not long out of the Architectural Association school of architecture, he won a competition to design branch offices for British Railways. But like other architects of his age, the outbreak of World War II nipped his nascent practice in the bud before he had time to establish his reputation. However, plans for post war reconstruction transformed prospects for young modernist architects. Modernism increasingly came to be seen as a way of addressing the changed social priorities arising from the war. Britain in the late 1940s, with its ambitious buildings programmes which flowed from the establishment of the Welfare State, was receptive to modern architecture in a way which no one could have hoped ten years earlier.
The Royal Academy Library designed by H. T. Cadbury-Brown RA One of the first and certainly the most visible outpouring of this new creative energy was the Festival of Britain, held on London’s South Bank in 1951. Cadbury-Brown was one of the numerous talented architects who worked on it under the overall design directorship of Sir Hugh Casson, erstwhile President of the Royal Academy, in his case designing the ‘Origins of People’ Pavilion. Fun, even light-hearted, the Festival upset the hardcore modernists but showed that contemporary architecture could be popular. Cadbury-Brown’s subsequent buildings showed how a sense of fun could be sensitively developed into elegant buildings with a real social purpose. Thes projects included halls of residence for Birmingham and Essex Universities and a large housing estate at World’s End in Chelsea, designed with Eric Lyons, Metcalfe and Cunningham.
Cadbury-Brown’s longstanding commitment to education led to two of his most notable commissions. The first is an extension to the Royal College of Art in which refined detailing and careful proportioning reflect its setting adjacent to the Royal Albert Hall. The second project was the creation of a print room and internal remodelling at Burlington House. This project took place while he was the Academy’s professor of architecture, a post he assumed immediately after being elected in 1975 and which he held until 1988. The print room and remodelling called for an even more sensitive approach to inserting modernist design into a historic context, and is perhaps the hallmark of his work.
Contact details for further information
Email membershipoffice@royalacademy.org.uk
