“How did the three young men from overseas beat the cream of British student architects in the contest to reshape the heart of the world’s greatest capital?” (Evening News. 9/2/1961)

Rory Westmaas (Right) and his brothers (Source: Black History Month)

Born in Guyana on June 12th, 1926, Richard Owen “Rory” Westmaas was the youngest of 8 boys growing up under British colonial rule in the West Indies. Not even two decades after Rory’s birth WWII broke out and as a British colony Guyana was expected to serve the mother country. While Rory was just 14 at the time this message did not land on deaf ears and he lied to be able to enlist in the Royal Air Force. After the war Rory returned home to Guyana where he became active in politics.

He stayed in Guyana until moving back to England shortly after in the 1950s. Once in England Rory went on to study architecture at the Brixton School of Building, which is now part of London South Bank University. Since its founding in 1904 the Brixton School of Building quickly gained a world-wide reputation as a center of excellence in the fields of town planning, building technology, estate management and building architecture.

This reputation is no better displayed then by recounting tales of Rory’s time in school. While studying in England he and two classmates, Courage Togobo of Ghana and Kuok Choo Soo of Malaysia entered a blind competition to redesign Piccadilly Circus. William Hall’s article in the Evening News on 9/2/1961 opened with a line that read “How did the three young men from overseas beat the cream of British student architects in the contest to reshape the heart of the world’s greatest capital?”

The answer to that question can be found deeper inside the article where the team describes the project's aim:

Aim: To create a civic core fully integrated with the work and life of the people in keeping with the demands of this area.
Problem: inadequacy of roads–i.e. The domination of the Circus by vehicular traffic. Solution: segregation of vehicles from pedestrian traffic.
Vehicular traffic: increased volume accommodate in greatly widened roads in a one-way system-no disruption of traffic system outside area.
Pedestrian traffic: access to piazza from Coventry Street unhindered by vehicular traffic. Piazza a natural climax to Regent-street quadrant and to Piccadilly as well as to populous pedestrian way from Trafalgar-square through to Leicester-square, Coventry-street and Piccadilly-circus.
Advertising: a system of back projection in clusters on obelisks and pylons and on specially designed end walls to office blocks

After winning the competition and graduating from the Brixton School of Building Rory went on to be the first Guyanese and second black member of the Royal Institute of British Architects a few years after Togobo. Rory later became a professor of architecture, town planner, political activist, woodworker, potter, magician, soldier, artist, architect, saxophonist, civil servant, debater, griot and legendary crepe maker. However, throughout Rory’s life in both Guyana and Britain his political activism would land him in trouble due to his communist sympathies.