Alexander Harvey was born in Bedford, UK, in 1925. Following war-time service with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, as a Temporary Midshipman and then Acting Sub-Lieutenant, Harvey attended Edinburgh College of Art, qualifying as an architect in 1952. He then moved to Kenya and was employed by the Public Works Department in Nairobi from at least 1956. In 1960 the East African Trade and Industry journal reported that Harvey and another member of the Kenyan Ministry of Works were spending six-months leave in Britain “learning a ‘new and revolutionary’ approach to Tropical Architecture.” Accordingly, the Architectural Association (AA) student register records Harvey and his colleague, Nelson Paine, as being funded by the Kenyan government to attend the AA’s Department of Tropical Architecture course for 1960-61. Immediately after graduating, he appears to have returned to his role in the Public Works Department, retaining his employment after Kenyan independence in the role of Superintending Architect for the Ministry of Works, Communications and Power. Harvey passed away in December 1965, at the age of forty, and is buried in Kisauni Cemetery, Mombasa. The only known work associated with Harvey is a set of tuition and boarding blocks for the Kenyan Institute of Administration, Kabete, Kenya (c1963).
Sources
- Architectural Association Student Register, 1960-61. AA Archives
- Architectural Association Council Minutes, 20th February, 1961. AA Archives
- Architectural Association Membership List 1961
- General Register Office; United Kingdom; Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916-2007, Reference: Volume 3a, Page 473
- National Library of Scotland; Edinburgh, Scotland; British Navy Lists. National Library of Scotland, 2020. https://doi.org/10.34812/y3wn-j486; Reference: 93281970
- National Library of Scotland; Edinburgh, Scotland; British Navy Lists. National Library of Scotland, 2020. https://doi.org/10.34812/y3wn-j486; Reference: 93399290
- Surveyor and Municipal and County Engineer, 1956, Vol. 115, p967
- The Register of Architects, 1961, Architects Registration Council of the United Kingdom, 1961, p133
- East African Trade & Industry, (1960), p.87
- Jubilee Year Book 1913-1963, East Africa Institute of Architects, 1963, p79
- Kenya Gazette, 23rd February, 1965, p166
- The Kalendar of the Royal Institute of British Architects, RIBA, 1965, p118
- ‘Alexander Purvis Harvey’ Accessed 6th June, 2025: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi
