Gordon Randolph Holmes Ricketts (1918 – 5 January 1968) was a British administrator. He was secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), a role that is now chief executive.

Life

Ricketts came from a military family and grew up in Kent. He was educated at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate, and

Keble College Keble College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to ...

, Oxford, he gained an honours degree in English language and literature. Later, he served in the RAF from 1940 to 1946. Between 1948 and 1951 he was on the staff of the

Federation of British Industries The Federation of British Industries (FBI) was an employers' association in the United Kingdom. History Founded by the Midlands industrialist Dudley Docker in 1916 as the United British Industries' Association, but renamed later that same year, ...

, and from 1951 to 1957 he was appointments secretary at

Nottingham University The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

, where he also lectured and tutored. Ricketts started at the RIBA in 1957 in the role of secretary for professional relations. After secretary C. D. Spragg retired, Ricketts succeeded him as acting secretary from March 1959. Ricketts was secretary from August 1959 until his sudden death in 1968 at St Margaret's Bay,

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

, aged 49. During his time as secretary, there was great change and conflict in the architectural profession, and he oversaw the major administrative reform of the RIBA to respond to it. He worked closely with the presidents of the RIBA, a post that has a two-year term, notably

Robert Matthew Sir Robert Hogg Matthew (12 December 1906 – 2 June 1975) was a Scottish architect and a leading proponent of modernism. Early life and studies Robert Matthew was the son of John Fraser Matthew (1875–1955) (also an architect, and the pa ...

and

Basil Spence Sir Basil Urwin Spence, (13 August 1907 – 19 November 1976) was a Scottish architect, most notably associated with Coventry Cathedral in England and the Beehive in New Zealand, but also responsible for numerous other buildings in the Moderni ...

. Ricketts also played a part in developing the idea for author

Selwyn Goldsmith Selwyn Goldsmith (11 December 1932 – 3 April 2011) was an architect, town planner, writer and disabilities advocate who was instrumental in the development of the universal approach to design. He wrote numerous books which became standard texts f ...

’s book ‘Designing for the Disabled’ published in 1963. The book was the first to provide guidance for designing for disabled people in buildings. In the RIBA’s headquarters,

66 Portland Place 66 Portland Place is an office building in Marylebone in Central London, near the boundary with Fitzrovia. Located on the corner of Portland Place and Weymouth Street, it serves as the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects ( ...

, Rickett's name and date of his tenure (1959–1968) are chiselled into a wall with a list of secretaries of the RIBA.

Family and legacy

At the time of his death, he had a wife and three children. Since 1968 in memory of Ricketts, every two years the RIBA Gordon Ricketts Fund awards a grant to support personal research projects related to architecture and the RIBA’s architectural collections. The most recent funding was awarded in 2018 and the next will be in 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ricketts, Gordon 1918 births 1968 deaths 20th-century English architects Architects from Kent Royal Institute of British Architects People educated at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate Alumni of Keble College, Oxford Academics of the University of Nottingham