Catch Up: REDISCOVERING REGIONAL PRACTICES 3: Percy Thomas Lecture
07/04/2022 – 06/07/2022
This is a recording of the event that took place on 7th April 2022:
REDISCOVERING REGIONAL PRACTICES 3: Percy Thomas Lecture
Presented by Robert Proctor
Robert Proctor will give an overview of the work and significance of Sir Percy Thomas (1883-1969) of Cardiff and his practice.
Sir Percy Thomas’s practice, the largest in Wales and active throughout Britain, spanned almost all the twentieth century and created much of the built landscape of modern Wales as well as making significant contributions to English towns and cities.
The architects’ work closely follows and illuminates the changing role of the state. Town halls and municipal buildings dominate the interwar work (exemplified by Swansea Guildhall 1930-34), followed by diversification into industry, higher education, and healthcare in the mid-twentieth century welfare state.
The Percy Thomas Partnership’s late twentieth-century fragmentation and expansion overseas reflect wider globalisation and neo-liberal politics, but nevertheless show a continued strength of state planning, with major buildings for councils and government departments.
Dr Robert Proctor is Senior Lecturer in Architectural History & Theory at the University of Bath, and is completing a book on Percy Thomas for the University of Wales Press.
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Above: Swansea Guildhall (1934); Photograph: c Robert Proctor
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