Patrick Nuttgens

Patrick John Nuttgens CBE (2 March 1930 – 15 March 2004) was an English architect and academic.

Life

Nuttgens was born on 2 March 1930 the fourth of five children of Kathleen Mary (née Clarke) and Jozef Edward Nuttgens, his father was a stained-glass artist.[1] His mother died when he was seven years old. His father remarried and had eight more children, the eldest of whom was named Joseph Ambrose and is also a stained glass designer, still living and working at Piggotts Hill.

One day, when Patrick was 12 years old, and a student at Ratcliffe College, he walked off the rugby pitch with a terrible pain in his back and, within a day, was paralysed from the chest down with poliomyelitis. He was hospitalised for nearly two years while he recuperated.

He studied architecture and painting at Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh. He met Bridget Badenoch, an English literature student at the University of Edinburgh; they married in 1954. In 1962, he became director of the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies at the University of York, and subsequently became Professor of Architecture there. In 1969, he was appointed first director of Leeds Polytechnic (later Leeds Metropolitan University, now Leeds Beckett University).

Nuttgens was Hoffman Wood Professor of Architecture at the University of Leeds from 1968 to 1970 and again from 1984 to 1985.[2]

He was awarded honorary doctorates by several universities including an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1990 [3] and was appointed CBE in 1983. His books include The Story of Architecture, The Art of Learning: a Personal Journey, The Home Front: Housing the People (1840–1990), York... the Continuing City (illustrated by Dr John Shannon), Leeds: The Back to Front, Inside-out, Upside-down City (1979) and The Mitchell Beazley Pocket Guide to Architecture.

Over the years, Patrick carved out a distinctive profile in the media, writing and presenting TV programmes on architecture and appearing as a panellist on radio programmes such as the Round Britain Quiz and Any Questions.

In his mid-fifties, he experienced worsening disability mistakenly diagnosed as multiple sclerosis now ascribed to post-polio syndrome. He operated from a wheelchair from 1985.

He died in 2004.

Patrick and his wife Bridget had nine children, including the composer Sandy Nuttgens and the Green Party politician and broadcaster Peg Alexander.

References
  1. "Nuttgens, Patrick John, (2 March 1930–15 March 2004), Director, Leeds Polytechnic, 1969–86", Who Was Who, Oxford University Press, 1 December 2007, doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u29792, retrieved 7 May 2019
  2. University of Leeds, Obituary, Published 7 April 2004
  3. webperson@hw.ac.uk. "Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh: Honorary Graduates". www1.hw.ac.uk. Retrieved 4 April 2016.


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