The Royal Festival Hall, London, opened in 1951. After half a century of constant use, the building and its auditorium found themselves stranded in a lifeless setting, unloved by musicians and losing money. For an upgrading in 2005-07 to enable the RFH to flourish again, the spirit of the original conception needed to prevail over the literal preservation of the structure.
This shift in the attitude taken towards conservation was achieved by the architect Diane Haigh, who has died unexpectedly aged 73, and it led to a more widespread change in guidance.
At the time, the overriding consideration when working on old or listed buildings was conservation of the building fabric – an attitude that often inhibited the changes necessary for extending their useful life.
Di saw that more was needed if the RFH was to remain viable, with its acoustics and access for a wider range of productions improved. The great sounding boards above the orchestra would have to be removed, the auditorium seat spacing increased, with seats and carpets refurbished, shops and cafes introduced on the river front, and offices moved out to the benefit of public lobbies. However, both English Heritage and the Twentieth Century Society objected to any change.
Seeking a way out of this impasse, Di researched the original scheme, interviewed its surviving authors and showed that the ideas behind the RFH’s design at the time of the Festival of Britain – its purpose as a performance space at the centre of a lively public place – were just as important a consideration as the fabric. English Heritage accepted this argument and changed its guidance. The RFH’s unloved auditorium gained a new life and the South Bank was revitalised.
As a director of the hall’s house architects, Allies and Morrison, Di’s role was never that of a backroom researcher. She was deeply involved in every aspect of the RFH’s upgrading – ensuring that the intentions of the original architects were respected, down to the restoration of the interior colour palette.
Earlier, she had led the adaptation of Inigo Jones’ Queen’s House at Greenwich, a Grade I listed building and Scheduled Monument completed in 1635. There, the challenge was how to adapt the building to meet the requirements of the 1995 Disability Act.
Di found a way of replacing an existing stair and inserting a new lift. So skilfully was this done that these and other changes – made in the face of intense opposition from English Heritage – in no way drew attention to themselves.
In 2000-01, she devised and implemented the successful strategy of converting Blackwell, a large house by MH Baillie Scott in the Lake District, into an art gallery. This drew on her experience when, from the early 1990s, she and her architect husband, William Fawcett, had restored five of Baillie Scott’s Cambridge houses – about which she wrote an outstanding book, Baillie Scott: The Artistic House (1995), and curated a travelling exhibition. At the time of her death, she was planning another book on this last of the internationally famous Arts and Crafts architects.
Born in Kendal, Cumbria (then Westmorland), Di was the daughter of Joan (nee Law) and Donald Haigh, an architect. After Donald’s early death, Joan continued as manager of his Lake District practice with an architect partner.
From Kendal high school Di went to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she graduated in architecture in 1971, before moving to Darwin College for her postgraduate diploma. It was at Cambridge that she met William, whom she married in 1977 and with whom she practised for many years. Their work was mainly on smaller projects, including their own exemplary low-energy house, and repairs to historic structures.
She assisted on research projects on Essex and Hampshire schools before moving to Hong Kong in 1982 to teach at the university.
Returning to Cambridge in 1985 she taught postgraduate studios – groups of students working on design projects – and, later, undergraduate studios. Working for Freeland Rees Roberts, she was also project architect (1986-90) for the restoration and adaptation as a hospice of Thorpe Hall, a fine 1650s country house near Peterborough.
Latterly, she was, for more than two decades (1995-2016), director of studies in architecture at Trinity Hall – supervising students during her weekends in Cambridge, following a working week in London.
In 2007, after working at Allies and Morrison for 11 years, Di was appointed director of architecture and design review at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). There, rather than being involved in the process of design, she became responsible for running review panels on significant projects in the planning system.
These included the sports facilities in the London Olympics, buildings for Crossrail and ecotowns. It was a huge programme and Di was deeply involved, using the design review process to hold commissioning bodies to account on quality – ensuring that significant projects were openly reviewed, no matter how forceful the opposition.
She championed the belief that design impacts everyone’s lives and that this is a responsibility that all involved must uphold. Under her leadership, CABE’s review process became both better defined and more transparent.
In 2011, following her return to Allies and Morrison, she co-edited The Fabric of Place, an exploration of how places work and of what design can contribute to their further evolution. The book is now widely used as a primer on architecture and planning courses.
From 2014 onwards, in Cambridge, she led design review in the expanding city. She was ever cheerful and energetic but, over the years, her impaired mobility (to which she never alluded) became increasingly apparent. But her extraordinary ability to engage with people remained and, during the Covid-19 lockdown, she devised and ran a programme of creative online studios on topics ranging from opera to poetry.
She is survived by William, their children, Eleanor and Francis, both architects, and three grandchildren.
• Diane Haigh, architect, born 2 May 1949; died 31 July 2022
