Colen Lumley, an architect, critic and painter whose work helped shape postwar Cambridge architecture and civic debate, has died aged 93. Though best known as a partner to the modernist architect Sir Leslie Martin – who designed the Royal Festival Hall – Colen devoted much of his life to painting, his studio walls gradually wallpapered with life drawings and landscapes.
Early life and education
Born in Isleworth, west London, he was the eldest son of Pip (Dorothy, nee Pateman), an artist, and Lesley Lumley, a master tailor just off Savile Row. His childhood was interrupted by the second world war: evacuated with his brothers, the family soon returned to London, risking bombs and doodlebugs rather than endure their host family. As a teenager he met his wife-to-be, Julie Cann – a talented artist in her own right – at the Heston swimming club. They married in 1954.
After school he worked for an engineering firm while studying architecture in evening classes at Regent Street Polytechnic. National service took him to Egypt, guarding the Suez canal, before he resumed his studies, eventually qualifying as an architect in 1959. Later, he went on a Churchill fellowship to the US and Canada to study university architecture and campus planning.
Architectural career
His early career included periods with Powell & Moya, and Ahrends, Burton and Koralek, where he worked on the library at Trinity College Dublin. In 1963 he moved with his wife and young family to Great Shelford, outside Cambridge, to join Martin’s practice, housed in a converted watermill on the river Cam.
There he contributed to several important projects, including the conversion of a former brewery for the Museum of Modern Art Oxford, the Gulbenkian Foundation gallery in Lisbon, and the award-winning Faculty of Music building (opened 1984) on West Road, Cambridge, for which he was credited as co-designer with Martin and Ivor Richards. At the mill he met the artist Ben Nicholson, who later spent many years there and once joined the Lumley family for Christmas.
He then set up his own practice, in which he worked on theatre projects in Wales with the director Chris Baldwin, alongside his son Ben. Colen was deeply involved in Cambridge’s architectural life. He helped establish the architecture centre and RIBA bookshop on King’s Parade (which operated from 1991 to 1998), co-founded the Cambridge Urban Forum, chaired the Cambridge Association of Architects and the RIBA eastern region, and for many years co-edited the Cambridge Architecture Gazette with David Raven, championing debate on planning, transport and urban design.
Later life as a painter
In his latter years, he became a painter, often exhibiting through Cambridge Open Studios. He and Julie settled in 2002 a house he designed in the Cambridgeshire countryside, its low roofline, open-plan interior and wide windows giving glimpses of trees and a neatly wild garden – a physical monument to his life’s work.
He is survived by Julie, his sons, Mark, Kim and Ben, his grandchildren, Anna, Guy, Sam, Josie, Laurie, Nolia and me, and his great-grandchildren, Felix, Erol, Theo, Clem and Elsie.
