Tony Hunt

Tony who recently passed away recently at 90 years was such a nice guy.

It was a privilege to work with one of the maestros of the British High Tech movement.

I first met Tony when I was an intern at YRM before a studio trip to INMOS,??then a few years later at his Edgware Road studio when working on a competition and then again on a winning competition entry for a basketball stadium for North London University. All modest endeavours compared to the extraordinary projects he helped bring to life, Reliance Controls being my favourite.

The last time I saw him I picked him up at his Cirencester studio and drove him to Cardiff to give an evening lecture at the School of Architecture where I was teaching. It was nice to spend time chatting with him about Frank Newby and Felix Samuely, names you don’t hear often these days but the miracle workers who engineered the Skylon and the best of Stirling and Gowan.

Tony was very open, energetic, positive and encouraging, he was patient and not at all condescending to a young budding architect (me at the time) given his position in the pantheon of the great British engineers. This was indeed a simple lesson from Tony in how to positively support creative dialogue a skill I have not encountered that often amongst the more usual ego and bombast of the great and the not so good.

I treasure the small books he made of his projects that I have in my library.

I can imagine Tony ascending on Powell and Pressburger’s cantilevered staircase to heaven with no visible means of support.