Pat Wakely obituary

Other lives: Architect who led the Bartlett Development Planning Unit at UCL and initiated progressive building programmes in the global south

My colleague and friend Pat Wakely, who has died aged 86, was an architect, educator and champion of progressive housing and urban development planning, in particular in the global south.

As director of the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London, from 1989 to 2003, he mentored generations of international students who have since gone on to shape cities across the world. His published research, including his 2018 book, Housing in Developing Countries, remains highly influential.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, to Joan (nee Hudson) and Ion Wakely, a barrister, Pat was driven by a lifelong belief that good housing was fundamentally about people rather than buildings. After boarding at Aldenham school, in Hertfordshire, Pat attended the AA School of Architecture, London, where he was awarded his diploma in 1962.

He and I first met in 1964 in Kumasi, Ghana, where Pat had started teaching at the University of Science and Technology, and was my year master. Even then, he was never content with standard textbook teaching. He eagerly explored local construction techniques and transformed real-world projects into collaborative learning experiences for his students. This defining blend of curiosity, practicality, and generosity became the hallmark of his life.

Following a period spent travelling and teaching in Pakistan, Pat returned to London in 1968, teaching at the AA School, then at the Bartlett DPU. There, a small group of us led by Pat began questioning traditional architectural education, focusing especially on how housing could better serve marginalised communities.

The group developed and ran a series of programmes at universities in India, Iraq, Thailand, Kenya and Pakistan, with hands-on field training. The integrated treatment of housing design and construction, urban upgrading and community development was at the core of teaching, training and advisory practice. In Baghdad, for example, students established a “building clinic” in the largest slum, to offer practical advice on house building; in Chandigarh the students developed housing finance models for lower-income government servants.

Leaving UCL in 1975, Pat taught in Bogotá, Colombia and Sri Lanka, before returning in 1989 to lead the Bartlett DPU and help establish it as a world leader in urban development and planning. On retirement in 2003 he became professor emeritus.

After a stroke in 2011 left him partially paralysed, Pat characteristically confronted the physical challenge. He resisted unnecessary aids, adapted his surroundings at his home in Tufnell Park, north London, with ingenious carpentry, and even designed a custom tool to put on his shoes unaided.

Possessing a rare ability to inspire people to challenge assumptions with both academic rigour and humanity, Pat maintained his sharp sense of humour and extraordinary memory for names throughout his life. In his final years, he poured his formidable energy into writing local and family histories under the pen name Tapy Lekaw.

He is survived by his wife, Beatriz Echeverri, an urban planner and poet, whom he married in 1974, their daughters, Ellara and Iona, and five grandchildren, and his brother, Michael.