Hunt worked on celebrated landmark High-Tech projects, including the Sainsbury Center with Foster + Partners, RSHP’s Inmos factory, and Waterloo International Terminal and the Eden Project with Grimshaw.
Norman Foster described Hunt as a ‘loyal and trusted friend’. He said: ‘In the first decades of practice, the professional and social sides of our family lives were wonderfully blurred.
‘Tony was a mature designer as an engineer, but he retained a child’s sense of wonder at anything mechanical and his enthusiasm was boundless and contagious.’
Andrew Whalley, chairman of Grimshaw, said Hunt had left ‘a great engineering legacy and a passion that will be sorely missed’.
Recalling their time working together on the Eden Project in Cornwall, he said: ‘It was Tony’s optimism and energy – ever present since the days I first met him – that helped the whole team turn a fantastic idea into reality.’
Born in London in 1932, Hunt studied engineering at Westminster Technical College and founded his own business, Anthony Hunt Associates, in 1962. One of the company’s early commissions was for Neave Brown’s Alexandra Road social housing estate in Camden.
‘When I was a kid, when Alexandra Road was being built, there was an annual bicycle race around the site if I remember correctly, which was quite a bit of fun,’ says Hunt’s son Julian Hunt, a designer working on listed buildings in the Cotswolds and contemporary projects throughout England.
After collaborating with Team 4 – the practice founded by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheesman – on projects including Creek Vean house in Cornwall and the Reliance Control factory in Swindon, Hunt went on to collaborate with Foster and Rogers for decades.
He also worked with Hopkins Architects on the Schlumberger Cambridge Research Center.
Schlumberger Gould Research Center in Cambridge by Hopkins Architects
Source: Historic England
Patty Hopkins, who co-founded the practice in 1976, told the AJ she especially remembers collaborating with Hunt ‘in the early days before projects got bigger and more complicated’.
She said: ‘Michael and I worked closely with Tony, when we were starting out. He was great to discuss initial concepts with, producing clear elegant sketches to illustrate his ideas and then, when a scheme had settled down, quickly worked out calculations justifying the results. Just what one needed.’
Hunt moved his office with 40 staff members from London to near Cirencester in Gloucestershire in the 1970s, turning half of the Grade II-listed Coln Manor in Coln St Aldwyns into office space and the other half into a home.
Anthony Hunt Associates collaborated extensively with architects and engineers YRM and the two agreed to join forces in the late 1980s with Hunt’s company heading the structures group to become YRM Anthony Hunt Associates, one of five independent divisions.
The engineer, who wrote the book Tony Hunt’s Structures Notebook as a teaching aid for students, retired in 2002 but was still coming up with designs a few months ago. Julian says he and his father thought up an idea for a grass bridge, scribbled on the back of napkins, during a visit to a sculpture park. ‘The engineering in it was going to be quite fun,’ he says.
He would like his father, who he said was ‘highly loved’ throughout the architecture profession, to be remembered as ‘a fun, brilliant guy who loved sailing and designing and building fantastic buildings throughout the world’.
Hunt’s daughter Polly Lyster said her father was the ‘greatest inspiration’ because of his ‘inquiring mind’ and interest in others. ‘My three kids have all chosen creative careers and I’ve got one too,’ said Polly, who runs the textile business Dyeworks, which works with architects and interior designers. ‘Dad was always encouraging us, he was always interested in what you were doing.’
Having spent lots of his time at his home in recent weeks, she said she fully appreciates his design, innovation and ‘visionary thinking’. ‘He loved building bridges, that was his passion – lightweight, fine structures,’ she said.
After retiring from his practice she says Hunt carried on teaching and took up painting. ‘He loved great food, he loved fine women,’ said Polly. ‘Life for Tony was for living and for loving.’
The funeral service will be held at St Mary’s Church in Painswick, Gloucestershire, at noon on September 9.
Tributes
Norman Foster, founder Foster + Partners
I have been privileged to engage with some of the most outstanding engineers of our times, but out of that wealth of talent a handful of individuals surface who go beyond their specialist skills and can engage as a creative force with other design disciplines. Tony Hunt was one of those rare individuals and his legacy goes far beyond the engineering practice he created and his later association with YRM.
His presence is evident in a wide body of work, starting with a series of houses designed by Team 4 in the 1960s, including the Creek Vean House in Cornwall and the Reliance Controls factory in Swindon.
This was the start of a long and mutually enriching working relationship that continued with Foster Associates where he collaborated closely with us on many of our key projects such as IBM Pilot Head Office in Cosham along with later IBM projects, the Willis Faber & Dumas HQ in Ipswich, the Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts in Norwich and latterly our millennium project, the Great Glasshouse at the Botanic Garden of Wales.
Among his other major projects during his long career he was responsible for engineering Waterloo International Railway Station for Grimshaw, the Inmos Factory for Richard Rogers and Partners, the West India Quay Footbridge for Future Systems and the Dyson Factory in Malmesbury for Wilkinson Eyre.
On a more personal note, Tony was a loyal and trusted friend. In the first decades of practice the professional and social sides of our family lives were wonderfully blurred. We spent weekends together and frequented the same restaurants. Tony was a mature designer as an engineer, but he retained a child’s sense of wonder at anything mechanical and his enthusiasm was boundless and contagious. He will be dearly missed.
Great Glasshouse at the Botanic Garden of Wales designed by Foster + Partners (completed 2000)
Source: James Hime/Shutterstock
Andrew Whalley, chairman, Grimshaw
I first met Tony in January 1982, at the University of Edinburgh Architecture winter school. As a young student I found his talks and lectures about his work wonderful so I was eager to join his teaching unit. At our initial meeting I was immediately struck by Tony’s down to earth, easy-going personality. He had boundless energy and enthusiasm that was infectious and left a lasting impression.
Shortly after, I invited him to come and tutor and lecture at the Mackintosh School of Architecture (where I was studying). He generously accepted and slept in the only place I could find quickly enough – my tutor’s sofa! Together we visited my favorite building, the wrought iron glass dome structure of Kibble Palace in Glasgow Botanical Gardens.
Little did we know that a decade later, we would be working together on another domed botanical garden.
A few years later I found myself working with Tony on the roof structure of Waterloo International Terminal. I have fond memories of the design sessions sitting around the table with Nick Grimshaw, Neven Sidor, Tony, and Tony’s dog!
Roof view of Grimshaw’s International Terminal at Waterloo station (completed 1993)
Source: Shutterstock
Tony was always ready to share his passion and inspiration, in this case the elegance of the steel Reynolds bike frame and its efficient use of materials and the Grimshaw team were equally inspired by the illustrations in Gray’s Anatomy. It was always a process of collaboration and these both, in their own way, influenced the lightweight, efficient, skeletal structure of Waterloo International.
Probably the most memorable experience, however, was working together on the Eden Project in Cornwall. The project, initially dismissed by so many, required a leap of faith which Tony and Nick took, tenaciously supporting Tim Smit from the beginning. And the design, which at first was inspired by Waterloo International, took shape over the years it took to secure funding, and became the beautiful geodesic domes we now know so well. It was Tony’s optimism and energy (ever present since the days I first met him) that helped the whole team turn a fantastic idea into reality. And still, 20 years later, the Eden Project its structure, form and function is celebrated.
Tony leaves a great engineering legacy and a passion that will be sorely missed, but it will live on in the buildings and structures he helped realize.
Roof of one of the Grimshaw-designed biomes at the Eden Project
Source: Shutterstock