Nigel Lane, Architect, Executive Director for MK Northern Towns

Nigel Lane was born in Hampstead Garden Suburb, the New Town founded by Dame Henrietta Barnett, with low density housing, wide roads with trees, ‘… not unlike Milton Keynes in many ways’. His father was Chief City Planner for the LCC so Nigel visited many new towns with him. At Haberdashers Askes school his skill at art and maths led him towards architecture. On a foundation course at St. Martin’ School of Art, he was taught by people like Hepworth and Frink. Then at Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture he studied what he describes as ‘a hard graft mixture of design and technology’ with tutors like Richard Rogers & Norman Foster. By then he was set on architecture, particularly housing design. He worked in New York on a new town near Washington, also on “The Lower Manhattan Plan”, planning for the World Trade Centre. He travelled for a while in Scandinavia looking at high quality housing. Nigel also studied carpentry and joinery at weekends at a Craft Guild for ten years and became an expert joiner. Back in London, he joined Austin Smith Lord architects, in Soho, for four years, working on Local Authority Housing Projects in Hillingdon. Nigel notes that he could in fact have chosen to be an artist or joiner, there were plenty of jobs and young graduates could choose where they wanted to work. By 1970, wanting a change of job, Nigel was told by Walter Bor that Milton Keynes would be the biggest opportunity for young architects; he began work at MKDC in 1971.