Profile: Kenneth M. Scott

If ever an individual could be credited with exceptional contribution to the architectural development of the city of Accra, Kenneth Mackenzie Scott is without doubt the person. He has more to his credit by Way of designing buildings and other facilities than any other individual could lay claim to. Indeed there was hardly a public building in Accra in the 1960’s and 70’s, which did not bear the mark of his brilliance.


So much was his contribution that for two long decades he towered over his peers in his chosen profession. As an architect, he always sought to create new and experimental concepts.He shook himself free of the restrictive norms of the established order and produced designs that always stood distinct from others. His designs spanned the entire spectrum of architecture and his style was considered avant-grade. He designed Educational, Cultural, Military, Sporting, Leisure and Health facilities all over Ghana.

His educational projects include the U.S.T. Schools of Pharmacy, Engineering and Classroom block. Also to his credit are the Faculty of Arts of the University of Cape Coast, Institute of Statistical,Social Economic Research and the Department of Nursing both of the University of Ghana and Lincoln Community School at Dzorwulu in Accra.

"Winky" designed health facilities among which are the Surgical, Maternity, Paediatric, Tuberculosis and Isolation Units of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital as well as the Ashanti Gold Fields Hospital at Obuasi.

The Police Headquarters, Police College and the Tamale Air Force Barracks belong to the long list of "Winky’s" designs. So do the Kumasi Sports Stadium in Ghana, East Central State Stadium Complex as well as the Imo State Stadium Complex both in Nigeria.

The British Council building in Accra, the Secondi, Koforidua and Tamale libraries are also his designs. His interest extended to Hotels where he designed the extension to the Avenida Hotel. Later he was to do project designs for the Ghana Airways and the British Caledonian Hotels, which are yet to be built.

His factory designs include the Unions Carbide factory at Tema, the Ceramics factory at saltpond and the Accra Brewery.

The many office building he designed are the Ministry of Foreign affairs building, the Diamond House and the Consortium House on the High Street in Accra.

The Scott house where he lived, the Taylor Woodrow house and the Taysec Town House are among the many residential houses that bear the Winky Scott mark.

This obviously hardworking and highly productive professional had time for leisure. Unlike most men of his cast, he was very sociable. He played Polo in his spare time and for many years was the president of the Accra Polo Club. Kenneth Mackenzie Scott was born in 1918 in Sydney, Australia. He was the third of five of his Australian mother and Scottish father. At the age of 11 his family moved to settle in the United Kingdom where he later took up a career in architecture.

When the Second World War broke out in 1939,he enlisted in the British Army. He was seconded to the seven battalion Gold Coast Regiment of Royal West Africa Frontier Force as a second Lieutenant. By the end of the war he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel with full responsibility for his battalion. He was honored with the Military Cross.

After the war he returned to England to complete his studies in architecture. On completing he joined the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and become a fellow in 1963.

In 1948,he joined the East Essex County Council. The following year he left Great Britain for the Gold Coast, more of a reunion with his “pattern in war” than a search for greener pastures.

In the Gold Coast "Winky" did not dally with whatever benefit membership of the colonial bureaucracy offered. For just after one tour with the Gold Coast Public Works, he joined the private practice of James Cubitt Scott as free partner. His desire to live free of any restriction authority did not end with his parting with the colonial administration. After a brief partnership with James Cubit Scott and Associates with practices in the U.K, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Fiji.

He made many Ghanaian friends and married a former high court judge, Mrs Theresa Stiggner Scott who later served as Ghana’s Ambassador to France. He was a founding member of the Ghana Institute of Architects and was it’s Vice President in 1960-70, and Secretary to the Architects Council during the period. He died in 1982 at the age of 63.In a tribute he was described as “the last of the Gold Coasters”. Mrs. Frances Ademola also paid a glowing tribute to his memory when she said of him; “He was a Gold Coaster in one time only, for he did not dwell with crippling nostalgia for the good old days. He read voraciously, ‘talked modern’ and identified himself with the hopes triumphs and disappointment of the Ghanaian. Through three republics, five coup d’etats and one revolution, he shared our expectations disillusions and our sometimes enforced silence.

Friends will remember him for his enormous capacity for affection and wit. But most concretely he will be remember for the numerous architectural monuments all over Ghana, which bear testimony to his genius.

Adapted from Tribute by KEN AMOAH in 'Journal of the Ghana Institute of Architects Vol. 1 No.1' JANUARY - JUNE , 1993.

Source: www.arcghana.org

Profile: Maxwell Fry

Fry was born in Liscard, near Wallasey in Cheshire. His father Ambrose Fry, a chemical manufacturer, later a property developer, was born in Canada, and his mother was Lydia (later called Lily) Thompson. He had two elder sisters and a younger brother. To his family and friends he was known as Maxi or Max.

He trained at the Liverpool Institute and the University of Liverpool School of Architecture where he gained his Diploma in 1923.


Maxwell Fry was one of the few modernist architects working in Britain in the thirties who were British; most were immigrants from continental Europe where modernism originated. One of his earliest commissions was Margate railway station which opened in 1926. In 1933 he co-founded the Modern Architectural Research (MARS) Group, a modernist architectural think tank.

His best known buildings are Kensal House, in Ladbroke Grove, London, completed in 1937, where he worked with pioneering social reformer Elizabeth Denby to create a spacious estate with modern shared amenities; Miramonte in New Malden, Kingston, Surrey; and Impington Village College, in Impington, Cambridgeshire designed in collaboration with Walter Gropius.

From 1934 to 1936 he practiced with Walter Gropius as Gropius & Fry. From 1937 to 1942 he worked as secretary, with Arthur Korn as chair, on the governing committee of the MARS group plan for the redevelopment of postwar London, the results of which were outlined in Chapter 4 of his work 'Fine Building', of 1944. During World War II he served with the Royal Engineers and worked in Nigeria, where he advised the authorities on town-planning and designed buildings for the University of Ibadan. Together with his second wife Jane Drew, he published books about tropical architecture. In the early 1950s, together with Pierre Jeanneret and Jane Drew, as senior architects, they did much of the housing of Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab, India. Fry and Drew designed the New Schools building, the Waterloo Entrance and the Harbour Bar for the Festival of Britain. Both Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew often collaborated with and were close friends of Ove Arup, the founder of the engineering firm Arup.

As Fry, Drew and Partners (1946-1973) the pair's major commission was the headquarters of Pilkington Glass in St. Helens. The building includes a number of modernist art commissions with works by Victor Pasmore.

Maxwell Fry was also a painter, writer and a poet, and he and Jane had among their many friends contemporary artists such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Victor Pasmore and Eduardo Paolozzi; and the author Richard Hughes. He was an ARA, exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, had a one-man show in 1974 at the Drian Gallery in London, and continued painting in his retirement.

In 1927 he married his first wife Ethel Speakman, by whom he had one daughter, Ann. He married Jane Drew in 1942, and they worked and lived together happily, retiring to a cottage in Cotherstone, Co. Durham where he died in 1987.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Profiles: Foreign Architects

We begin this section with profiles of some foreign Architects who have made profound contributions to Architecture in Ghana.

Maxwell Fry
Kenneth M. Scott