Richard Gibson (architect)

Richard George[1] Gibson (19 November 1935 – 26 December 2024) was a British architect born and trained in London but mainly known for his buildings in Shetland from the late 1960s.

His best-known projects include the John Jamieson Closs (1982–84), Gremista (1999) and Grödians (2011) housing developments in Lerwick, Mainland, and Hamnavoe Primary School, Burra (1980).

He attended Bedales School near Petersfield, Hampshire,[2] and then studied at the Architectural Association, London, where he was a contemporary of the well-known architects Neave Brown, Richard Rogers and Georgie Wolton.

[2][6] According to the architectural critic Rowan Moore, who interviewed him in 2024, Gibson struggled to negotiate office politics in Camden, which was a factor in his sudden decision, in 1968[7] or 1969, to relocate with his family to Shetland.

[6] Initially he served as Shetland's deputy county architect and, in 1972, he started his own practice in Lerwick, Mainland, later based on Commercial Street, where he remained for the rest of his career.

[2][7] Gibson's early works in Shetland used concrete blocks rendered in traditional Scottish fashion with harling, a roughcast coating containing small pebbles sourced from the local coast.

[9] He later came to consider this practice environmentally unsound, and moved to constructing timber-framed buildings, finished with wooden cladding, which was sometimes painted in colours, such as Gremista and Grödians.

[7] Hamnavoe Primary School (1980) has a simple design, with a steel frame finished in white render; the main teaching block has five identical bays with gently angled gables that recede in steps.

[19] Moore calls it "light, airy";[6] the local architecture writer Mike Finnie describes it as suitably proportioned for the settlement, "casual and fragmented enough to fit".

[19] The practice also designed council offices,[7] and Gibson was responsible for the administration building of Dales Voe Oilrig Base (1986) in Lerwick.