AADipl ARIBA

Written by Peter Salter, former AA Unit Master & AA Dipl(Hons) 1980

"David’s relationship with the AA spanned more than 45 years. That period saw David pass from the white shirted environment of the Barrel Vault drawing office, as a student between 1950–1955, to become a member of the so-called ‘Gang of Four ‘ who deputized as Chairman during the interregnum year following Alvin Boyarsky’s death in 1990. David undertook virtually every role in the AA. Within the School he will be particularly remembered as a Unit Master in both Intermediate and Diploma Schools.

David came to the AA after completing his National Service. Post–War Britain was a heady place for students and young assistants. Neave Brown, his contemporary and closest friend, writes of those destined to be architectural assistants and architects “coming from the schools committed to the idea that British architecture, generally sad and provincial, needed a dose of vigour and a theoretical basis for work.” The idea of strong strategies for design that formulated detail, which Neave describes as “diagrammatic clarity, formal poise and active and economical architecture” stayed with David throughout his career as practitioner and teacher. What he taught was what he believed in and what underpinned his architecture. His student cohort included Kenneth Frampton, Neave Brown, Patrick Hodgkinson and Adrian Gale. Some fellow students were to meet again in the practice of Lyons Israel and Ellis (later Gray). Regarded for its “conviction and positive presence …the office was renowned as a training ground for James Stirling, James Gowan, Alan Colquhoun, John Miller, David Gray, Christopher Dean and Richard McCormack”, many of whom were to go on to become major theorists and teachers as well as architects, setting up a reciprocity of ideas between practice and education.

David started work at Lyons Israel and Ellis in 1957, became a partner in 1970, and continued until the practice closed in 1984. Perhaps his most admired work, and indeed the one he was most proud of, was the National Sea Training School in Gravesend Kent. As a project, it carries some of the familiar ideas of the practice: the frame, the repetition of components, the expression of functional elements, and the clarity of circulation.

With the appointment of Alvin Boyarsky in 1972 and the development of the unit system, David started to teach with David Shalev. The “two Davids “, as they were known, taught what they practiced: forms of modernism. Subsequently, David went on to teach with Neave Brown, an influential local authority housing architect for Camden. In 1982 David started to teach with Kisa Kawakami, also from Camden Architecture Department. Their prospectus for the year’s work was always site specific, detailed and precise, relating mainly to shoreline sites and often post industrial in character. Grounded in maps and beautiful card site models, the student work was recorded by David in exquisite and tiny pencil strategies, drawn for his records in a surveyor’s notebook. Looking back at the End of Year Project Review for 1987-88, it seems that the students in his unit were largely divided between those that went on to teach and those that became his friends, though the roles were not mutually exclusive.

It was at the End of Year Diploma Committee tables that I first met him. In a scene sometimes tantamount to gladiatorial combat, David was always completely fair, generous and mild mannered, looking for a body of work to support. Alvin Boyarsky recognized David’s measured response to the student portfolio and appointed him tutor in charge of External Students, as successor to Ron Herron and David Greene. The students in his care were for one reason or another in need of more time to complete their work. David was careful that such students had the opportunity to develop their talent and ideas.

In recognition of his continued support for the school over so many years, as student and much valued teacher, David was awarded an Honorary Membership of the AA on 5^th March 2013, coming out of hospital to receive the award."