Bob Strang: BOB STRANG, who has died aged 77 after a long illness, was an influential architect and town planner whose work over 40 years made a lasting impact in Northern Ireland.
In particular he will be remembered as one of the original team which designed the city of Craigavon; as the planner of Poleglass in west Belfast; and for his work on inner-city housing redevelopment in Belfast in the 1980s.
Robert Andrew Strang was born in Glasgow, educated at Allen Glen School and the Royal College of Science and Technology, which later became Strathclyde University. After National Service with the British army in Cyprus, he joined Glasgow Corporation, before becoming part of the team designing Cumbernauld, a new town created to ease Glasgow's population overspill.
In 1963, he came to Northern Ireland to start work on Craigavon, at the time Britain's most ambitious new town project. The scale of the endeavour was huge. The then Stormont government acquired compulsorily some 6,000 acres of land between Lurgan and Portadown and set about building a city for 100,000 people. But the project was beset with problems. First, the chief planner resigned because his designs were considered too futuristic. Then in 1973, with millions invested and Craigavon only partially completed, the government pulled the plug, in part due to lack of funding caused by the oil crisis.
However, one of Bob Strang's ideas for Craigavon would become a landmark. He created the balancing lakes which are now a well-known geographical feature but which were also designed for practical purposes, to catch rainwater running off the hard surfaces created by the new development.
After Craigavon, he was appointed to the newly established Northern Ireland Housing Executive where he headed its design and feasibility unit. He found enormous inner-city problems. At one level, these were common to most UK cities but in Belfast there was the added dimension of the Troubles with fear and intimidation leading to mass movements of population to "safe" areas. Belfast was not a city planning for growth; instead it was a city facing catastrophic decline.
As Bob Strang and his colleagues saw it, town planners had to recognise that there were two parallel cities - an overcrowded and youthful Catholic inner city and a sparsely populated and elderly Protestant inner city.
To ease the overcrowding in Catholic west Belfast, it was proposed to create a geographical extension into the green belt at Poleglass. This was a brave political decision. It amounted to the relocation of 10,000 Catholics from inner Belfast into the green fields of a Protestant-controlled and elected council at Lisburn, which is now a city in its own right.
In the 1980s, he faced new challenges: how to revive inner-city housing within Belfast. In 1981, the government specifically identified housing in the city as its prime social priority. As a result, at a time when ever other local authority in the UK was being denied money for council housing, £1 billion was allocated to Belfast.
Under his guidance, the Housing Executive decided that no new high-rises would be built. Instead, the 10,000 new homes which were created - many of them run-down dwellings restored - would virtually all be two-storey terrace or semi-detached homes.
Working closely with local communities, the executive placed emphasis on properties built with traditional materials and with generous living space. While living conditions were undoubtedly improved, critics of the scheme argued that it reinforced the polarisation of communities. However, the reality which the planners faced was that people felt safe only if they were rehoused within their own enclaves.
Throughout his career, Bob Strang brought distinction and international recognition to the achievements of the Housing Executive by insisting on the highest standards of design, often standing firm in the face of pressure brought by financial stringency and regulations.
He was an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. He and his wife Winnie made Craigavon their home for most of their lives in Northern Ireland, moving latterly to Belfast. He is survived by her and by three sons, Christopher, Gordon and Ken.
Bob Strang: born May 18th, 1931; died April 6th, 2009