Will Alsop – our playful, maverick artist and  rchitect – has gone. It’s a great sadness to me and an even greater loss to my profession. Sadness to me because I knew him well.

We worked together on a couple of projects: Palestra, his lovely office block in Southwark, and the unbuilt Puddle Dock in the City of London. My daughter Maxine, having written her Bartlett dissertation on Will’s magnificent Peckham library, went to work and paint with him and is now an associate director with his office, ALL Design. My father-in-law, Tom Porter, wrote a book on him – The Noise. They became great pals and smoking buddies and their wives became enduring friends. 

So my relationship with Will had many valences – he even asked me once to chair his practice. When I got back to him, pointing out that I actually had my own practice, he retorted that it was alright as he had found someone better to do the job – Marco Goldschmied. Classic Will! 

Will’s work was not technology as architecture, it was art as architecture, full of form, colour and wit in the pursuit of social purpose

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