H.T. Cadbury Brown RA (1913-2009)
Born: 20 May 1913
Died: 9 July 2009
Elected ARA: 22 April 1971
Elected RA: 24 April 1975
Category of Membership: Architect
The Royal Academy Library designed by H. T. Cadbury-Brown RA
From RA Magazine Autumn 2009 : Nick Savage remembers the modernist architect who redesigned the RA Library, Archive and Print Room
In July, H.T. (Jim) Cadbury-Brown died aged 96. Elected an RA in 1975, he served as the Academy's Professor of Architecture for thirteen years. A modernist in the tradition of Le Corbusier, he was a pupil of Ernö Goldfinger. He worked alongside Sir Hugh Casson (former RA president) on the designs for the Festival of Britain, but visitors to the RA who explore beyond the main galleries, may well have seen his remodelling of the library and archive. Nick Savage, Head of Collections and Library, shares his memories:
"For Jim and Betty – they were very much a husband-and-wife design team – it was only in the everyday use of things that a lasting beauty could be revealed. Style and fashion, icons and signatures, were of no consequence to them.
"What mattered most to them in designing the RA Library and Print Room was to discover what these spaces needed to reveal the beauty of their use. Only in one small detail does the design fail, and not through their fault. I now realise how foolish I was to resist Jim’s idea of giving the long counter in the Print Room a sloping top – not only would this have prevented piles of clobber obscuring its clean lines, it would have also given us a perfect way of displaying more treasures from the Library and Archive. It was a classic opportunity, sadly missed, for combining use and elegance of the kind that Jim and Betty spent a lifetime creating for their friends and clients."
