Basil Urwin Spence was born in Bombay on 13 August 1907, the son of Urwin Spence, an analytical chemist employed by the Indian civil service, and his wife Daisy Crisp. He was initially educated at the John Connon School in Bombay, but in 1919 at the age of twelve he moved to Scotland and attended George Watson's College as a day pupil. After leaving, he enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art in September 1925, initially to study painting and sculpture. He soon transferred to the School of Architecture, studying design practice and town planning under Frank Charles Mears and Harry Hubbard, and architectural history and theory under John Summerson who was only three years his senior. His other tutors at the College were Sydney J Miller, Leslie Grahame Thomson and George Washington Browne. Bursaries, prize money and income as a freelance perspectivist allowed him to travel extensively in England in 1927, France in 1928 and also in Germany. In 1929 he gained the College's certificate and exemption from the RIBA's intermediate examination. His brilliant draughtsmanship secured him a place in the office of Sir Edwin Lutyens, whom he assisted with the designs for the Viceroy's house, New Delhi, and while in London he took the opportunity to study at the Bartlett School of Architecture under Professor Albert Richardson.
On his return to Edinburgh Spence won the RIAS Rowand Anderson Medal during session 1930-31. In the latter year he gained his diploma from the College of Art and won the RIBA's Silver Medal as the best architectural student in the UK.
At the College Spence made friends with William Kininmonth, who also went to Lutyens' office. Kininmonth had previously been employed by Rowand Anderson & Balfour Paul, but when he returned from London Paul was unable to offer further work. Nevertheless, Kininmonth was given the use of a room in the office at 16 Rutland Square, and although it had only a single desk and a telephone this allowed him to take Spence into partnership in 1932. Their practice was immediately successful, thanks in part to the connections of Kininmonth's radiologist brother and Kininmonth's own modernist house at 46A Dick Place (1933) which proved an excellent advertisement. As well as design work the partners also specialised in presentations for other much larger practices.
Spence won the RIBA Arthur Cates Prize for town planning in 1932, tying with Robert Matthew, and then the Pugin Studentship in 1933. He was admitted ARIBA that year, his proposers being John Begg, Reginald Fairlie and William James Walker Todd. Both he and Kininmonth secured part-time teaching posts at Edinburgh College of Art. In 1934 Spence married Mary Joan Ferris of Tiverton, Devon.
In that year Paul offered Kininmonth a partnership, which he felt he had to decline unless Spence was taken into partnership as well. Paul accepted this proposal and the Kininmonth & Spence practice was merged with Paul's as Rowand Anderson & Paul & Partners. Although business had significantly recovered, to the extent that the practice secured commissions for three country houses, Spence and Kininmonth continued teaching at Edinburgh College of Art. This arrangement continued until Paul died in June 1938.
Independently of the practice, Spence won the competition for the Scottish School of Art & Industry at Kilsyth, and received three separate commissions in respect of the Empire Exhibition held at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, in 1938. These included the highly acclaimed Scottish Pavilion which he designed in collaboration with the Exhibition's organiser, Thomas Tait.
Spence had joined the Territorial Army in 1934 and was commissioned in the Royal Artillery on the outbreak of the Second World War. He was seconded to the Camouflage Training & Development Unit at Farnham, and later served as an intelligence officer in Normandy. After demobilization and in the absence of substantial practice work he resumed teaching at Edinburgh College of Art, but in 1945 he was appointed chief architect of the Britain Can Make It exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The partnership of Kininmonth & Spence having been dissolved, Basil Spence & Partners was established with Bruce Robertson in November 1946. Andrew Renton became a partner in 1949 when he took charge of the practice's first London office. Robertson left the practice in 1950 to practise independently, and John Hardie Glover and Peter Scott Ferguson were taken into partnership in 1951.
Spence's subsequent career was spectacular. He was elected FRIBA in 1947, his proposers being Thomas Tait, Joseph Emberton and F R S Yorke. He joined the Art Workers Guild in 1953. He leapt to prominence during the Festival of Britain in 1951 as chief architect for the Exhibition of Industrial Power in Glasgow and the designer of the Sea & Ships Pavilion, perhaps the best of all the displays on London's South Bank. In the same year he won the competition to design the new Coventry Cathedral, and he was subsequently responsible for ten parish churches. He built several schools both in Scotland and England. Although often criticised as a picturesque designer unconcerned by the dictates of structure, his nuclear physics building in Glasgow confirmed his mastery of complex technological briefs and led to some fifty university buildings in Scotland and England, including three major campuses at Nottingham, Southampton and Sussex. His remarkable versatility allowed him to turn his hand to major projects as diverse as the Hutchesontown C redevelopment in the Gorbals (1965) and Abbotsinch Airport (1966) in Glasgow, Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks in London (1970), and the Chancery of the British Embassy in Rome (1971).
By this date he was withdrawing from everyday involvement with the three architectural practices of which he was the head. Andrew Renton had left to practise independently in May 1961, with Spence continuing his own London ractice in the same office at Canonbury Place. In 1963 the London practice split: the Canonbury Place office was renamed Sir Basil Spence OM RA, with his son-in-law Anthony Blee as partner and his son John Urwin Spence as consultant; and a new office was opened at Fitzroy Square as Sir Basil Spence, Bonnington & Collins, John (Jack) Bonnington and Gordon Collins having been taken into partnership as based at Fitzroy Square. These changes having been made, at the beginning of 1964 the original practice at Moray Place, Edinburgh had become Sir Basil Spence, Glover & Ferguson. Jimmy Beveridge was taken into partnership in 1968; Andrew Merrylees in 1972; and John Legge in 1973.
Spence retired in 1972, although he continued to act as a consultant to the firm. In his last years he retreated to his holiday villas on Malta and Majorca, stung by a reaction against his work which was in sharp contrast to his previous popularity, but he nevertheless remained a prolific designer with a number of foreign commissions.
Basil Spence was blessed with great charm and remarkable powers of persuasion, and he did much - especially during his Presidency of the RIBA, 1958-60 - to engender public interest in modern architecture. He was the first Hoffman Wood Professor of Architecture at the University of Leeds, 1955-57, and Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, 1961-68. He was elected a Royal Designer for Industry (Exhibitions and Interiors) in 1960, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1962; he was also Treasurer of the Royal Academy, 1962-64, and a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission, 1956-70. Among many other distinctions from both home and abroad, he was appointed OBE in 1948, advanced to KBE (knighted) in 1960, and received the Order of Merit in 1962. He died at Yaxley Hall, near Eye, Suffolk, on 19 November 1976.
also TD, ARA and ARSA per Builder 1959