David Mackay
Architect and urban designer Born: December 25, 1933 Died: November 12, 2014
DAVID MACKAY, who has died aged 80, was a globally-renowned architect who spent most of his career in Barcelona, helping design the Catalonian city’s striking modern seafront and harbour area and the athletes’ village for the 1992 Olympic Games. His urban design, as he liked to call it, bridging the gap between architecture and city planning, transformed the Mediterranean city’s seafront, though later came under criticism since it was meant to provide cheap post-Olympic housing but instead became a des-res area for the better-off.
His work, did, however, give his company MBM (Martorell, Bohigas & Mackay) a reputation which led them to regenerate seafronts around the world, from Rio de Janeiro and Amsterdam to Hastings and Plymouth on England’s south coast. In the early years of this century, he produced what he called A Vision for Plymouth and chaired a panel to redesign the city and especially its seafront, now known as the Mackay Plan. In 2002, he also oversaw a £2 billion regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley in the Thames Gateway, east London, part of the project to rejuvenate the area with a bid for the 2012 Olympic Games in mind.
Perhaps spoilt by his support from all sectors of society in his adopted Catalonia, he became somewhat disillusioned during his UK projects, where he found business and councils vying for the credit and taking control away from the architects. Nevertheless, many of his peers compared Mr Mackay with the great Glasgow-born architect James Stir- ling and said his late-20th century work was highly underestimated.
Mr Mackay was credited with “giving back the sea to the people of Barcelona” by reinvigorating the old harbour blighted by factories and railway yards and played a key role in moving his adopted city from one in economic decline to one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, emulating Madrid, Seville and Cordoba. Having married a Catalan woman, a cleaner at the Northern Polytechnic in Holloway, north London, he moved to Barcelona in his late twenties and spent the rest of his life there. “It became my adopted home, and it adopted me,” he said.
As a young architect, Mr Mackay found himself on the frontline of a budding Spanish revolution. Spanish dictator General Franco attempted to suppress the language and culture of Catalans, Basques and others. Languages other than standard Spanish, castellano, were barred. Catalans and Basques who criticised Franco had to do so in whispers. Mr Mackay did it through his designs, insisting on modernist architecture against Franco’s traditionalism. Understandably, he never got the recognition of Barcelona’s most-famous son, Antoni Gaudí, who designed the city’s Sagrada Familia church.
David John Mackay was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, on Christmas Day in 1933, the youngest of three brothers. His birthplace instilled in him a love of the sea. His parents, Fred and Sonia Mackay, of Scottish, Irish and English origin, had worked in the colonies, mostly India and Africa’s Gold Coast (now Ghana), where Fred was a colonial administrator. And so young David was educated at a series of boarding schools in Scotland, England and Ireland. He retained a love of Scotland and particularly Glasgow, where he went to school before being evacuated after the Clydeside blitz. He always said Glasgow architecture was one of the greatest influences on his work.
An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS), he became a regular at RIAS annual conventions, a lecturer to Scottish architecture students and a judge in Scottish architecture competitions.
In 2009, his illustrated autobiography A Life in Cities was published by the RIAS with funding from the Glasgow Institute of Architects. In it, he said his origins in Scotland and his childhood in Glasgow shaped him as a man and architect and showed him how architecture could improve the human condition.
“It (the book) contains lessons for his fellow architects and for the politicians, civil servants and clients who influence the evolution of our human habitations,” according to Iain Connelly, President of the Edinburgh-based RIAS.
“David was one of the pre-eminent architects of his generation. His work helped shape many cities and greatly influenced the evolution of European architecture and city planning. He was an architect of consummate skill and sensitivity who was always determined that his work should serve people’s needs and improve their lives.”
After marrying Joser in London, Catalonia became Mr Mackay’s chosen home and there the architects Josep Martorell and Oriol Bohigas took him under their wing as a partner at MBM in 1962.
Their vision was to take Spain beyond the dictatorship they knew could not last. Mr Mackay’s Celtic roots were a major influence on their aim of freeing Spain from dictatorship — without guns, but at the drawing board. They wanted to ensure Barcelona did not become a concrete high-rise jungle such as Fuengirola or Benidorm.
Until Franco’s death in 1975, Mr Mackay played a subtle but significant role in undermining the dictatorship, discreetly aiding those who opposed Franco.
“Architects have given up too easily their role in the architecture of cities, of the public space. It has been left to planning,” Mr Mackay said in 1998. “Most public space is addressed by engineers, trying to get a car somewhere as quickly as possible.”
Last year, he published On Life and Architecture, again something of a guidebook for architects. His last major work was Barcelona’s dramatic Design Museum, which is due to open this week.
David Mackay died in his sleep at his home in Barcelona. He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Roser (née Jarque), their two sons and four daughters, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.