Майкл Хопкинс: Архитектор и основоположник хай-тека

English architect (1935–2023)

Sir Michael John Hopkins (7 May 1935 – 17 June 2023) was an English architect. The RIBA Royal Gold Medal winning architect founded Hopkins Architects with his wife Patty and was widely regarded as among the greatest of contemporary British architectural figures. Michael, alongside Patty, was part of a select group of leading British architects who were regarded as the founders of the "High Tech" architectural movement (the other four included Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell).

Hopkins was born in 1935 in Poole. His father, Gerald, was a builder and his mother, Barbara, decided at a young age that Hopkins would become an architect. Hopkins attended a public school in Sherborne. In 1976 Hopkins set up what became Hopkins Architects in partnership with his wife, who had run her own practice. One of their first buildings was their own house in Hampstead, a lightweight steel structure with glass façades. Early Hopkins Architects' buildings, such as the Greene King brewery in Bury St Edmunds and the Schlumberger laboratories near Cambridge, used new materials and construction techniques. The firm challenged conventional architectural wisdom by demonstrating that lightweight steel and glass structures could be energy efficient and pioneered the use in Britain of permanent lightweight fabric structures, of which the Mound Stand at Lord's Cricket Ground is a notable example. From the mid 1980s the practice began to explore what they called the "updating of the traditional materials", adding to the expressive potential of traditional crafts like masonry and carpentry by combining them with contemporary engineering. The practice became recognised for its combination of ultra modern techniques with traditional architecture, broadening their palette of materials and forms. All three children followed their parents into creative/design based professions: Sarah is project director for the refurbishment of the National Gallery; Abigail became an architect and has a joint practice with her husband; and Joel is a BAFTA winning film writer/ director. Hopkins had 11 grandchildren. Hopkins died from vascular dementia on 17 June 2023, aged 88.