Hamish Haswell-Smith was born in Glasgow on 20 September 1928, the son of Ralph Jeanrenaud Haswell-Smith and his wife Marion McNab. His father had served in the First World War and was wounded on the Somme. He studied agriculture at Edinburgh University, joined the Indian Forest Service and, in 1945, became Director of Land Improvement for the Bombay Government.
Hamish Haswell-Smith was educated at Dollar Academy until his father, having retired, was recalled to India for the war effort in 1940 and took his family with him. His schooling was completed at the Lawrence Memorial Royal Military School in the Nilgiri Hills, South India. At the age of fifteen he had achieved sufficient qualifications at school to gain entry to the Royal Technical College (Strathclyde University), Glasgow, where he completed his first year in architecture. His family had by then returned to Edinburgh so he transferred to Edinburgh College of Art.
During the summer vacation In 1946 he worked in the office of Basil Spence & Partners on the ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition, and in 1947-48 he served his year of ‘practical’ training in the office of Arnott & Inch Morrison. After qualifying in 1951 he and three other College graduates, Ben Matthew, Peter Melville and Arthur Fairweather formed the ‘Design Group’ and were commissioned by Basil Spence to carry out the detailed design of the Railways & Shipbuilding exhibition at the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow for the Festival of Britain (Jack Coia having suddenly resigned from the project after completing a sketch layout).
He was elected ARIBA in 1951 and late that year he took up a three-year contract with Hedley G Radford & Partners in Kampala, Uganda, and at the end of this he transferred to the practice of Imre Rozsa in Nairobi, Kenya.
In 1955 he married Jean Aline Hilton, granddaughter of one of Kenya’s first ‘white settlers’. In the same year he set up in private practice on his own account in Nairobi but work was partly interrupted by having to serve with the Emergency Forces during the Mau Mau uprising, a Kikuyu tribal ‘civil war’ with violent atrocities. During this time he entered a number of competitions including the one for Liverpool Cathedral. He was prize-winner in the King George VI Memorial competition for Nairobi. In 1959 he was joined by Ian Macfarlane as a partner and the practice was beginning to flourish. The next year, however, although the Kenya Legislature already had a multi-racially agreed programme for universal franchise, the British Government against all local advice insisted on immediate self-government. In the resulting chaos the entire economy virtually collapsed and all building work ceased. After six months of ensuing unemployment Haswell-Smith, with a wife and young son, Iain, aged three, decided to return to the United Kingdom.
At the end of 1960 he joined Bernard Laurie Matthew, whom he had known from his student days and who had just started in private practice in St Colme Street, Edinburgh. The following year the firm, under the title Matthew, Smith & Partners, moved to 15 Queen Street. In 1963 his daughter, Jannine, was born. Haswell-Smith was elected a Fellow of the RIAS in 1964 and served for a time on the Council. In 1966 he was a prize-winner in the Siporex Housing competition adjudicated by Jack Coia and in 1970 won a limited competition for 600 houses at Hallglen for Falkirk Council. The firm had opened branch offices in Dunfermline and Bathgate and Alexander Hall Maclean was taken into partnership in 1968 followed by William Clive Braid Hamilton in 1972.
In early 1972 Haswell-Smith underwent a serious medical operation and was hospitalised during which time the firm was renamed Matthew, Hamilton, Maclean, and moved to Albany Street. Haswell-Smith then set up business on his own account as Haswell-Smith & Partners at 66 Frederick Street in late 1972.
In 1974 Philip Samuel Black became a partner in the Edinburgh office and John Gray became the partner in charge of the new Hamilton (West Coast) branch office. A large part of the firm’s work was for Government and Local Authorities but a number of competitions were entered including the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, the Pahlavi Library in Teheran, offices for the Houses of Parliament in London (placed but never built), and the new Australian Parliament. In the same year (1974) the small one-man practice of E L Williamson (deceased) owned by John Innes at 16 North Silver Street, Aberdeen was taken over and Innes became a consultant to the firm. In 1978 Peter John Allam became a partner for about one year before starting his own practice in Dollar.
In June 1982 Haswell-Smith became a Consultant to the practice and John Gray and Philip Black became partners in charge but in November 1983 on the resignation of Philip Black, John Gray took John Alexander Smith into partnership to run the Edinburgh office. This arrangement, however, only lasted until the existing work was completed in 1985 after which the firm was closed.
Having always had an interest in painting for recreation, and sailing for sport, Haswell-Smith now devoted his time to these pursuits. He and his wife travelled extensively and his sketchbooks were always to hand. Paintings were exhibited in most of the Royal Scottish Academy’s summer exhibitions during the years 1984-91 and he held five one-man shows in Edinburgh, one in Dunkeld and one in Glasgow. His paintings have also been exhibited by the RSW and at exhibitions in London, Paris and Venice. In 1985 he joined the Society of Architect-Artists but this was so essentially London-centric that in 1987 he gathered together a small group of like-minded Scottish architects and founded the Scottish Society of Architect-Artists with the Duke of Gloucester as royal patron. The SSAA has close links with similar organisations on the Continent and exchange participation in the various annual exhibitions.
For sailing, having previously raced on the Forth and gained a Yachtmaster qualification at Leith Nautical College in 1976, he took up cruising, mainly on the West Coast, and this interest eventually led him to write the best-selling ‘The Scottish Islands’ illustrated with his own drawings and paintings and with his own maps created by computer-graphics. This large book which has run to several editions has also an Italian translation. A further book ‘An Island Odyssey’ followed and several commissions for book illustrations including ‘The illustrated Vital Spark’ – a selection of Neil Munro’s famous ‘Para-Handy’ stories.
Haswell-Smith was President of the Scottish Arts Club in 1982-84 and President of the Scottish Society of Architect-Artists from 1987 to 1990.
Biographical notes kindly provided by Mr Haswell-Smith.
'Biography authored by the Dictionary of Scottish Architects Compilation Team.'