thumb|right|250px|The now-demolished [[Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth. It was described by Prince Charles as "a mildewed lump of elephant droppings".]]
Harold Owen Luder (7 August 1928 – 8 October 2021) was a British architect who designed a number of notable and sometimes controversial buildings in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s, many in an uncompromising brutalist design, and many now demolished. He served as chairman of the Architects Registration Board and twice as President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 1981–1983 and 1995–1997. He established his own practice Owen Luder Partnership in 1957, and left in 1987 to form the consultancy Communication In Construction.
Luder was president of RIBA when Charles III, then Prince of Wales, attacked what he saw as the ugliness of modernism. Luder told colleagues to ignore him and just say "sod you", leading to some critics of brutalist buildings dubbing them "sod you architecture".
Early life and career
Luder was born in London in 1928, the son of an unknown father and Ellen Clara Mason, who married Edward Charles Luder in 1931. He grew up on the Old Kent Road in south London. As a boy he wanted to design aircraft but after the Second World War decided to become an architect,
Luder featured in the 2005 BBC Radio 3 broadcast Gateshead Multi-Storey Car Park. A radiophonic tribute to Trinity Square, produced by Langham Research Centre, the programme was made entirely from the sounds of the car park, processed and treated on quarter-inch tape.
Luder also designed the conversion of a Victorian fire station into the South London Theatre in 1967. In addition he designed a number of small houses in the borough of Lambeth including 26–28 Groveway (1953) and 76–78 Herne Hill Road (1954), one of the latter was occupied by Luder upon completion.
thumb|16 Grand Avenue, Hove. Designed by the Owen Luder Partnership in 1965
Some of the less controversial OLP buildings have escaped attention. In their housing and mixed use developments, for example, they display a consistent formal language and many continue to be well used to the present. Examples of these include Harrogate House, Harrogate (1963), Hendon Hall Court in North London (1963), and 16 Grand Avenue in Hove (1965).
The OLP built many buildings around South London, where Luder lived for some time, but also much wider in the UK. The OLP also developed unbuilt schemes for Nigeria, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, and Greece where partnership practices were started.
Trinity Square in Gateshead was demolished in 2010, and Derwent Tower in 2012. The Catford Centre, Luder's last surviving town centre of the Tricorn type, was purchased by the local council in 2010 for "regeneration", which may involve demolition of the housing on the site. Roxby House in Sidcup survives as an example of his later work.
National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/128) with Owen Luder in 2015-16 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.
Death
Luder died on 8 October 2021, at the age of 93.
See also
- Rodney Gordon, design director at Owen Luder Partnership.