The architect Gillian Hopwood, who has died aged 98, only recently found recognition in her home country, England, after a career spent since 1954 in Nigeria. As Godwin and Hopwood, she and her husband, John Godwin, worked together as equals in a partnership that long outlasted the larger London-based practices that briefly flourished there in the years leading up to independence in 1960.
Jill and John met while studying at the Architectural Association (AA) in London in the postwar period. On the teaching staff there were members of Architects’ Co-Partnership (ACP), a firm founded by prewar AA students, and after graduation Jill and John joined a newly established ACP branch office in Lagos, Nigeria’s capital city at the time. After 18 months they decided to remain, but as an independent practice. The combined home and office they built at 27 Boyle Street on Lagos Island, a “tropical modernist” design with innovative passive cooling, showed their commitment. Keeping government hours of 8am to 2pm with their staff, they took the afternoon off, but worked again after dinner from 9pm to midnight, and produced around 1,000 buildings during their time in practice.
