To chair a large panel of judges with divergent priorities ought to be a challenge. It was one Graham Pye enjoyed, sticking with it from 1996, always enthusiastic and driven by his conviction that the Housing Design Awards would uncover new treasures each year.

 

Graham was the ideal leader because his interests covered so much ground. He was a housebuilder on both sides of the Atlantic as head of the Pye Group, building new homes across southern England and British Columbia. He had been president of the Home Builders Federation, twice, in 1985 and 1990. He had been a director of the NHBC from 1998 to 2004. He was even a trustee of Turn End in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, an arrangement of three houses and gardens where architect Peter Aldington lives which opens to visitors as a high-water mark for post-war residential architecture in the UK. He was also the only one among the judges who understood civil engineering, thanks to his degree.

 

What really made Graham tick was plan form. He was rarely taken by elevational treatments, assessing the very traditional and the self-consciously modern with equanimity, a legacy of working through 50 years of architectural styles. What always exercised him was the layout and plan. If the later did not work, then the scheme’s odds of winning an award lengthened dramatically. Each year during the early rounds of judging when studying the A1 submissions, Graham’s eyes would go straight to the plans. Entrants who had chosen to ignore the explicit criteria to include them were damned.

 

This was exactly how it had been this year when the judges met at Design for Homes for the initial shortlisting for visits. Graham rang a couple of weeks later to say he was not going to join us for visits as he had to go into hospital, but hoped to make the ceremony. Just over a month later, after a long and painful operation, he rang full of energy, to find out who had won and who would be attending the ceremony. If Graham approved of something, his speech would be full of joyful exclamatory remarks as he showed his pleasure and encouragement. Such was the conversation that night as he backed the judges’ choices. Two days later on Friday 12 June, he passed away.

 

Graham took over the chairmanship with his ambition of uniting the industry behind the awards. He rallied the NHBC and RTPI and drove the awards forward by expressing their remarkable 61 years of government sponsorship. He redirected the book to make sure it was bigger format, so that plans were easier to read, of course. He has left a vital legacy to the Awards, achieving a genuine pan-industry process, making them stronger than they ever have been. Their only weakness is the loss of a superb chairman.

 

David Birkbeck

Rapporteur, Housing Design Awards