A PROFESSIONAL LIFE GEOFFREY HUTTON, DIPARCH (DIST), ARIBA, FRSA

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Eulogy .

Geoffrey Hutton DipArch (Dist) ARIBA, FRSA was born in 1931.  He attended the Hull School of Architecture where he was awarded the William Hoffman Wood Travel scholarship and a Diploma with Distinction.  After qualifying he attended the Royal School of Military Survey and was commissioned as a National Service Officer in the Royal Engineers serving in a Field Survey Squadron.  He entered architectural practice in 1955 and worked on a variety of building projects in this country and in Africa notably on Independence House in Lagos, a 25 storey office block to celebrate Nigerian independence.  In 1960, he was appointed an AJ Research Fellow jointly with Michael Rostron to work on a major project for technical information. He resigned in 1963 to start his practice which was later joined by Michael Rostron.

Author of many articles and series in the technical press, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has been a director of the National Approvals Council for Security Systems, and was a director of TRADA Certification Limited, and was the first Chairman of the Construction Industry Computing Association; he was a Director of the Scottish Stone Liaison Group (SSLG) and the Natural Stone Institute (NSI) in Edinburgh. He was familiar with the insurance industry as a name at Lloyds where he was vice-chairman of an action group.  He had an interest in environmental medicine and has been published in the American Archives of Environmental Health.  He was a member of British Standards Institution committees on documentation, technical manuals and handbooks, building trade literature, and microcopying of engineering drawings.  He also served as a member of the advisory committee for the Royal College of Art Readability of Print Research Unit, as an external examiner at The Queen's University, Belfast; as a member of the Ministry of Health Inter‑Regional Hospital Board study group on sanitary assemblies; of the Construction Industry Research and Information Association steering committee for The Construction Industry Thesaurus; and as founder Chairman of the Construction Industry Computing Association.  He was consultant for the BS code of practice on non-loadbearing walls and a BS guide on the care of historic buildings.  He also specialised in investigating building failures, for example of curtain walls, and the causes of ill-health in buildings such as allergies, fungi and asbestos.  He won many awards for technical publications, such as the Cape Universal Technical Manual, the British Gypsum White Book and the Barbour Compendium, and he was the lead contractor for two EU IMPACT projects on electronic publishing developing an on-line information system for the construction industry.  Since 1970 a large part of his practice has been the investigation of latent defects or building material failures and out of this arose his advocacy of an environmental approach to the control of decay in buildings which has since been adopted by English Heritage.  In 1990, H+R under his guidance were given a DTI SMART Award for industry with Dr Sarah Watkinson of the Department of Plant Sciences of Oxford University to develop alpha-amino-isobutyric acid as a fungal inhibitor.  In 1992, H+R also became the major UK partner with BRE and the Scottish Institute of Wood Technology in the DTI EUREKA Serpcon project for the environmental approach to detection and treatment of timber decay in buildings.  He prepared many reports on construction and conservation matters including economic studies of the building industry 'A future for stone' in 1980 for DOE and 'A future for stone in Scotland' in 1997 for the Scottish Executive.  He started the Architectural Salvage Index and acted as an expert witness

He was senior partner in Hutton + Rostron.  He was also chairman of Hutton + Rostron Environmental Investigations Limited which has pioneered environmental control of fungal attack in buildings, Hutton + Rostron Data Exchange Limited and Fungal Control Systems Limited which is jointly owned with Isis Innovations Limited of Oxford for the purpose of developing systemic inhibitors for dry rot

He had a continuing interest in historic buildings from his award winning measured drawings of the York Merchant Adventurers Hall in 1949 and his dissertation on the Hull Paragon Station, to H+R’s involvement in historical and material research, and work on listed buildings, particularly after disasters such as the fires at Cullen House, Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle.  He was responsible for setting up one of the earliest Conservation Areas in Thames Ditton, Surrey in 1964 and continued to take an active part in environmental and amenity matters up to his death in 2010

© Hutton + Rostron, 2009