{"id":745594,"date":"2024-07-03T08:06:29","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T07:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/?p=745594"},"modified":"2024-07-03T12:24:30","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T11:24:30","slug":"kate-macintosh-a-radical-champion-of-public-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/kate-macintosh-a-radical-champion-of-public-housing","title":{"rendered":"Kate Macintosh: a radical champion of public housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know you\u2019ve arrived at Kate Macintosh\u2019s house from the laminated posters on the garden railings, calling for proportional representation, clean air and a reduction in Hampshire\u2019s travel carbon footprint. Chez Macintosh is a late Victorian terraced house in Winchester, which she has opened up to a young Azerbaijani architect in the process of seeking asylum in the UK. Previously, he was billeted in a hostel next to a tube station construction site. \u2018It operated at nights, so sleep was impossible,\u2019 she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the opposite side of Macintosh\u2019s road, mercifully screened by mature trees, is a row of execrably bland new \u2018executive homes\u2019. Such developments represent the depressing obverse of her lifetime\u2019s work in the public sector, initially in London, for the boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth, and then in East Sussex and Hampshire.<\/p>\n

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\u2018It was difficult to relate to my peers \u2026 they were totally at sea when it came to treating women as equal colleagues\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Emblematic of Berthold Lubetkin\u2019s famous maxim \u2018Nothing is too good for ordinary people\u2019, Macintosh\u2019s output of schools, fire stations, playgrounds and social housing speaks of a commitment to decent, dignified architecture for all. As she told historian Elain Harwood in a 2017 interview, her closest brush with naked capitalism was designing a golf clubhouse in the south of France while working for Ahrends Burton & Koralek. To her relief, it never made it off the drawing board.<\/p>\n

Turning 87 in July, Macintosh\u2019s spirit of radical intensity remains undiminished. Starting out in practice in the mid-60s, just as social strictures were loosening and modernism was flourishing, her timing was apposite. Architects were building brave new worlds, realising the ambitions of the post-war welfare state.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking back on a career spanning six decades, she admits she has been fortunate. \u2018I had my education virtually for free; was able to travel and work in other countries; and just walked into jobs with opportunities.\u2019 Yet she still came up against countless men not afraid to express the view that a woman in architecture was at best an oddity, at worst a liability. When she qualified, only 4 per cent of British architects were female.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Kate Macintosh at Dawson\u2019s Heights, south-east London<\/p>\n\t

Source:Michael Franke<\/p><\/div>\n

But in many respects, she\u2019s had the last laugh, f\u00eated as an exemplary designer and pioneering activist, reconceptualising models of practice and showing how you could have a different kind of life in architecture: collaborative, generous, socially minded, while all the time chipping away at the received image of the architect as a lone male genius. In 2021 she was awarded the Jane Drew Prize as part of the W Awards. Now comes another lifetime achievement tribute in the shape of the AJ\u2019s Contribution to the Profession award.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She credits her father, Ronald Macintosh, an engineer and the son of an architect, for encouraging her to think about architecture as a career. One formative childhood gift from him was a copy of Frederick Gibberd\u2019s The Architecture of England<\/i>. A lifelong socialist who worked in local government, Ronald Macintosh met Kate\u2019s mother Bertha at a social event in support of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Studying architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art, Macintosh preferred the company of art students. By her second year, she was the sole woman in her class.<\/p>\n