The Yorkshire-born architect held both himself and his Dundee students to the highest standards – which he would go on to apply to his beautiful, self-built family home
Barry Heathcote was perhaps typical of his generation. Born in wartime and coming of age with the postwar boom, he left school to be a technician in Sheffield’s parks department, took night classes, went to study at Leicester School of Art and then at the Architectural Association in London.
A working-class ‘Yorkshire lad’, he loved fishing and developed a strong sense of place and family despite losing both parents before adulthood. He travelled widely and had a love of art, cinema and philosophy and a dislike of ‘middle-class entitlement and ignorance of the labour movement of the industrial north’.
After the AA, Barry worked in London and Oxford for over a decade. At the Oxford Architects Partnership, key projects were Beechwood House residences at All Souls College and Cleeve Court in Streatley-on-Thames, Berkshire. This elegant scheme for 11 Scandi-modern town houses by the river incorporated various architectural ideas Barry later used in his own home.
Bridging a generational gap
His work straddled the gap between British modernism (economic planning, timber elements and gardens) and the emerging postmodern vernacular. He called his approach ‘romantic pragmatism’, a term coined by Peter Davey in the Architectural Review in 1983 to describe work that drew on Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler rather than the utilitarianism of Europe’s modernist pioneers. Barry greatly admired Peter Aldington’s house at Turn End and the work of Ted Cullinan, with its references to context and careful timber detailing.
In 1976, Barry became a lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) where his wife Sue, a textile designer, also worked. When he retired, Barry was head of school. Ex-colleagues remark on his intellectual acumen, openness and generosity.
Barry gave Graeme Hutton, today’s deputy dean, his first proper teaching job despite their divergent architectural approaches. ‘He never shied away from critical confrontation,’ recalls Hutton.
Barry set a high bar for himself and his students, and his critiques were exacting – often feared – but grounded in clarity and depth of judgement
Barry’s former students remember his passion, high standards and kindness; and his family ‘hoose’ at Dura Den, in rural north Fife. Barry took six years to design Underwood and 10 more to build it with Sue and the children, Helen, Libby and Tom.
Former student Samuel Penn notes the similarities between Barry’s teaching and homebuilding: ‘He approached both with conviction, and a perfectionism that may have held him back from doing more. He set a high bar for himself and his students. His critiques were exacting – often feared – but grounded in clarity and depth of judgement. He challenged us to work harder, to take architecture seriously.’
Underwood’s planning is immaculate, with an economy cultivated in the 1970s off the back of the modern movement and material shortages. The children’s bedrooms are almost monastic in dimensions and bathrooms are carefully planned, allowing extra space for living.
In Scotland there was a small group of modern architects in the 1950s to 1970s who reimagined the relationship between house and landscape (see Morris and Steedman). Barry’s house stretched this modern tradition while engaging with vernacular form and craft.
He built it almost entirely himself, including many reclaimed materials. His students followed the project’s progress; it became a real exercise in teaching and learning. When it was finally published in Alder 02 in 2023, it captured the imagination of many of today’s young architects trying to square the circle between energy conservation, daylight and views.
Penny Lewis is a lecturer in architecture and urban planning at the University of Dundee