Today marks the centenary of the birth of Merthyr-born architect Dale Owen.
Ivan Dale Owen was born in Merthyr on 2 August 1924. He attended Whitchurch Grammar School and went on to the Welsh School of Architecture in 1941. War service between 1943 and 1946 – he was commissioned in the Royal Artillery – took him to the North-West Frontier of India.
After completing his professional training in Cardiff and at The Bartlett School of Planning in University College London, he went on to work in London and then for the Newport Borough Council Architects’ Department and the Cwmbran Development Corporation where he was instrumental in the redevelopment of the town. In 1954, he won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning and Harvard Graduate School of Design as a research scholar.
He then spent over a year working for Walter Gropius’s practice, The Architects Collaborative, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He returned to Britain, where he became a senior architect/planner with William Holford & Partners in London, where he worked on plans for the reconstruction of London after the war. He returned to Wales with health problems and in 1958 was hired by Percy Thomas & Son as an associate in their Cardiff office.
In the mid-1960s, the colleges of the University of Wales were growing rapidly. Percy Thomas Partnership redeveloped the campuses at Swansea, Aberystwyth and Cardiff, where Owen’s economics tower was allowed to burst through the hallowed skyline of Cathays Park.
The new BBC Wales headquarters in Llandaff, Cardiff, was another major work of the 1960s. Owen recalled with delight his victory over penny-pinching bureaucrats in persuading the corporation to buy real Mies chairs for the reception area.
He valued quality over any issue of style, though he had little time for Post-Modernism and rigorously eschewed the folksy look when designing a new gallery block for the Welsh Folk Museum at St Fagan’s – he later extended the building in collaboration with his wife, Maureen (née Kelly), a fellow-architect, who he had married in 1964.
Between 1977 and 1979 he was the President of the Royal Society of Architects in Wales. In 1982, he served as High Sheriff of South Glamorgan, and he also served as Deputy Lieutenant of South Glamorgan. He retired from Percy Thomas Partnership in 1989.
After retirement from Percy Thomas Partnership he established his own architectural practice, Dale Owen Design, Architecture & Planning. In 1991, he became director of Cymric Building Preservation Trust until his death in 1997. Owen also sat on the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Council. He was also involved in the Civic Trust for Wales.
There is a memorial window to Owen and to his son who died in infancy in All Saints Church, Penarth. The window includes a depiction of Owen’s design for the bell tower and Great Hall of Aberystwyth University, in which it signifies the Heavenly City (right).
Selected works
- Cardiff University, Masterplan (1960)
- Swansea University, Halls of Residence (1960-8)
- Swansea University, School of Social Studies (1961-2)
- Cardiff University, Ty Gwyn halls of residence (1961-7)
- Swansea University, Library extension (1963-4)
- BBC Broadcasting House, Cardiff (1963-7)
- Aberystwyth University, Development plan (1965)
- Aberystwyth University, Great Hall & bell-tower (1967–70)
- Aberystwyth University, Cwrt Mawr halls of residence (1967–70)
- St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff, entrance building and galleries (1968–74)
- Portcullis House, Cardiff (1970-3)
- Aberystwyth University, Students Union (1971)
- St. Nicholas, Dyffryn House, staff houses (1971)
- Cwmbran, Cwmbran Sports Centre (1972-3)
- Aberystwyth University, library and Hugh Owen building (1972-6)
- Aberystwyth University, Brynamlwg (staff sports and social club) (1974)
- Aberystwyth University, Development plan (second stage) (1984)