Alan Clawley, 4 December 1943-30 April 2018.
We are very grateful to Joe Holyoak, architect and urban designer, for allowing us to publish the obituary he wrote for Alan, that was published last week in the Birmingham Post.
Alan Clawley, who has died
from cancer at the age of 74, was an environmental and social
activist and campaigner who spent the last 43 years of his life
dedicated to various causes in Birmingham. Alan was an architect,
educated at the Architectural Association in London, although he did
not pursue conventional architectural practice after 1973. He
graduated from the AA in 1969, and the route that his professional
allegiances and activities took is typical of his generation.
1969 was the high point of
orthodox modernism in architecture and planning – the idea that we
could build the world anew, rejecting the past and starting boldly
from scratch. But it was also the point at which the consensus on
modernism began to crack apart, and from which alternative
philosophies were developed, leading to very different and more
diverse forms of practice in the 1970s. The path that Alan chose
reflected this shift in culture.
After graduation, an
enthusiastic modernist, Alan worked first for Runcorn New Town
Corporation, on a housing scheme of 2,000 concrete dwellings, and
then for the Greater London Council, on expanded towns in the
southeast and east Anglia. He became disillusioned by the realisation
that he was designing new dwellings for thousands of people whom he
never met, and about whom he knew nothing. This mechanistic mass
production of buildings, in which the occupants played no part, was
replaced for Alan by the practices of community architecture and
planning, in which the inhabitants are engaged in the process,
playing a central and active role.
In Alan’s own words, the
terms which defined his life from 1973 onwards were “community,
public participation, localness and smallness of scale”; all
characteristics absent both from his architectural education and from
his employment in Runcorn and London.
One of the forms of
practice which replaced large-scale modernist production in the early
70s was the government’s Inner Area Studies, which included a focus
on local character, and promoted the improvement of older housing
instead of its wholesale clearance and replacement. One of the
pioneering studies was based in Small Heath; in 1975 Alan came to
Birmingham, joined the team running the study, from the architecture
and planning firm Llewellyn-Davies Weeks Forestier-Walker, and
continued to live in Small Heath until his death.
The house in which Alan
lived with his wife Hazel, whom he married in 1972, was itself
illustrative of his social and economic beliefs. The Clawleys joined
the Small Heath Park Housing Co-operative, which built a cluster of
houses for its members, completed in 1984. They were Green Party
members from the same time, regularly standing as candidates in local
wards at council elections, including last week’s election, where
Alan stood in Bordesley Green.
The community technical
aid movement, which flourished during the 70s and 80s, made the
professional services of people like architects accessible to sectors
of society previously distant from them. In Birmingham the Inner City
Partnership Programme funded Community Networks and the Digbeth
Trust, for whom Alan acted as community technical aid worker between
1984 and 1992, enabling many community groups to obtain design and
development advice.
Alan was born in
Liverpool. His parents were Salvation Army officers, and Alan moved
several times with them as they were allocated new posts around the
country. It is likely that Alan gained much of his social conscience
and his inherent asceticism from his upbringing by them. Alan was a
quiet and modest man, but fiercely principled, and willing to fight
for a cause he believed in.
In recent years he became
best-known for his passionate championing, as the secretary of the
Friends of the Central Library, which he co-founded, of John Madin’s
1974 building. It is perhaps surprising, on the face of it, that
someone dedicated to post-modern modes of community advocacy, and
small-scale and local grassroots development, should be so passionate
about a monumental piece of modern concrete Brutalism.
But it was in fact all of
a piece. Alan admired the Central Library’s rigour, austerity and
honesty, as well as its ethical virtues of architecture in public
service. As a Green Party activist, he was also opposed to the
wasteful destruction of a building which could be reused. Alan was a
keen mountain walker, seeking out elevated rocky landscapes, and also
greatly attracted by Norman cathedrals. It is perhaps not fanciful to
see Alan responding to tough characteristics in Madin’s library
that were similar to what he found in those places.
Alan
was not afraid to challenge power and authority, and systematically
countered the various dubious arguments put forward by the council
and developers for the library’s demolition. Through his advocacy
he became a great admirer of John Madin, and wrote his biography,
published in 2011. He later wrote “Library Story”, the history of
the Central Library and its eventual fate (2016). In between he wrote
“Batsfords Birmingham Then and Now” (2013).
At his death he had
completed the draft of a book on the history of planning and
architecture in Birmingham from the 19th
century onwards, and I hope to see this edited and published.
Alan leaves his wife
Hazel, their children Jonathan and Alison, and two grandchildren.
Alan Clawley, born 4th
December 1943, died 30th
April 2018.
