Following Angela Brady’s two year tenure as head of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Stephen Hodder MBE was officially inaugurated as the 75th President of the UK’s largest architectural body yesterday. Hodder, perhaps best known as the recipient of the first RIBA Stirling Prize in 1996 for the Centenary Building (University of Salford, UK), is chairman of the award-winning practice Hodder + Partners in Manchester (UK).
The Presidency of the RIBA, previously held by Architects such as Sir Basil Spence, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and Alfred Waterhouse, is the highest elected position in the institution.
Upon his election in May 2012, Hodder stated the importance of doing ‘more to promote the importance of collaboration between client, design and delivery teams’ as a method of leading to ‘more successful architecture’. The issue of architectural education reform is also on his agenda, noting that ‘for the first time the views of SCHOSA (Standing Conference of Heads of Schools of Architecture) and the RIBA are aligned and we need to see big changes over the next two years’.
His manifesto also includes a strategy of cultural outreach, including ‘delivering a nationwide cultural programme that exploits our remarkable resources’. Along with the opening of the Cormody Groarke Gallery at 66 Portland Place, the RIBA’s London headquarters, a new base in Liverpool is opening next year so that the institution's large ‘drawings collection can come out to the regions and communicate to a wider public’. Hodder will serve as President until September 2015.
Film courtesy of Mies. UK (April 2013)
References: RIBA, Architects' Journal
