Letter of the week

Pencil to paper

I MUCH enjoyed the cartoon illustrating Clive Aslet’s review, the new book on Sir Edwin Lutyens’s office (). The drawing office shown, with its galleried work stations facing the daylight (), is an exact replica of the rear ground-floor studio in Sir Frederick Gibberd’s office in Percy Street, London W1, where I worked as a young architect in 1963—I would have been the one up on the gallery, in the centre. It was, of course, before the days of computer-aided drawing. I may be one of the few architects left who can say that they prepared design drawings for a cathedral (Roman Catholic ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’ in Liverpool) and a monastery (Douai Abbey, Berkshire) in HB pencil.