Romano Roland Paoletti, CBE (23 April 1931 – 13 November 2013) was a British-Italian architect. He was best known for his work on the early stations for

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

's Mass Transit Railway, and for commissioning the award-winning designs of the stations of

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...

's Jubilee Line Extension. He was described by the Architectural Review as "the Medici of London Transport".

Early life and career

Paoletti was born in London in 1931, at the City of London Hospital. His father was Italian and his mother French. The name Romano came from a church local to Lucca, Italy, where his father's family are thought to have lived for at least 700 years. His father was treated as an enemy alien in the Second World War and the family had to move to Scotland. In 1942, Paoletti was sent to Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school in County Kildare, Ireland. From 1948 he studied architecture at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

, then moved to London to work with Basil Spence. After this he undertook postgraduate studies at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice under Carlo Scarpa and Giancarlo De Carlo. He became an assistant to Pier Luigi Nervi on the building of a new British Embassy in Rome to a design by Spence.

Hong Kong

Paoletti later moved to

, working at Palmer and Turner before becoming an architect at the rapidly expanding Mass Transit Railway (MTR) in 1975. He became chief architect in the MTR's programme to build a new urban transport system. Over a period of twelve years, Paoletti led a team that designed 37 stations on the

Tsuen Wan Tsuen Wan (formerly also spelled Tsun Wan) is a New towns of Hong Kong, town built on a bay in the New Territories West (constituency), western New Territories of Hong Kong, opposite Tsing Yi, Tsing Yi Island across Rambler Channel. The market ...

Kwun Tong Kwun Tong is an area in the Kwun Tong District of Hong Kong, situated at the eastern part of the Kowloon Peninsula, and its boundary stretches from Lion Rock in the north to Lei Yue Mun in the south, and from the winding paths of Kowloon P ...

and

Island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

lines across Hong Kong completing the initial phase of the MTR. Paoletti was responsible for key design decisions that now form part of the MTR's design identity – the use of a single colour throughout a station, the use of mosaic tiles, and oversized calligraphy of the station name. The use of individual colours for each station was thought to give each station a unique identity, as well as assisting illiterate passengers. According to MTR's chief architect Andrew Mead, the colours were often chosen based on the

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

names of the station – such as

Choi Hung Choi Hung Estate () is a public housing estate in Ngau Chi Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong. It was built by the former Hong Kong Housing Authority () and is now managed by the current Hong Kong Housing Authority. It received a Silver Medal at the 1965 Ho ...

(Rainbow) and Lam Tin (blue).

Jubilee Line Extension

Waterloo tube stn Jubilee eastbound look west

In 1990, Sir Wilfrid Newton, chairman of the MTR, left Hong Kong to become chairman of London Regional Transport and Paoletti joined him in London, as commissioning architect for the new stations as part of the Jubilee Line Extension. There had been plans to extend the London Underground's

Jubilee line The Jubilee line is a London Underground line that runs between in suburban north-west London and in east London, via the West End of London, West End, South Bank and London Docklands, Docklands. Opened in 1979, it is the newest line on the ...

for many years. The final route for the extension involved eleven stations:

Westminster Westminster is the main settlement of the City of Westminster in Central London, Central London, England. It extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street and has many famous landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, ...

, Waterloo,

Southwark Southwark ( ) is a district of Central London situated on the south bank of the River Thames, forming the north-western part of the wider modern London Borough of Southwark. The district, which is the oldest part of South London, developed ...

London Bridge The name "London Bridge" refers to several historic crossings that have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark in central London since Roman Britain, Roman times. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 197 ...

Bermondsey Bermondsey ( ) is a district in southeast London, part of the London Borough of Southwark, England, southeast of Charing Cross. To the west of Bermondsey lies Southwark, to the east Rotherhithe and Deptford, to the south Walworth and Peckham, ...

, Canada Water,

Canary Wharf Canary Wharf is a financial area of London, England, located in the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Greater London Authority defines it as part of London's central business district, alongside Central London. Alongside ...

, North Greenwich,

Canning Town Canning Town is a town in the London Borough of Newham, East London, England, north of the Royal Victoria Dock. Its urbanisation was largely due to the creation of the dock. The area was part of the ancient parish and County Borough of West Ham, ...

West Ham West Ham is a district in East London, England and is in the London Borough of Newham. It is an inner-city suburb located east of Charing Cross. The area was originally an ancient parish formed to serve parts of the older Manor of Ham, a ...

and Stratford, plus a new depot at Stratford. Since the 1930s, London Underground's architects had designed the surface buildings, but the sub-surface spaces were designed by civil engineers and only fitted out by the architects. Paoletti hired different architects to design each station, while maintaining that all should share an "underlying philosophy and essential elements." His own in-house architect team coordinated the work of the various architect teams, as well working on Waterloo and Canada Water stations.

Recognition

Many of the Jubilee line stations received individual awards and commendations for their architecture, including Westminster and Canary Wharf being jointly awarded the 2000 Civic Trust Building of the Year. The Royal Fine Art Commission named the extension as a whole their Millennium Building of the Year, with the chair of the judging panel calling it "comparable to the achievement of Haussmann when he constructed the great boulevards of Paris". Paoletti himself received the

RIBA ''Riba'' (, or , ) is an Arabic word used in Islamic law and roughly translated as " usury": unjust, exploitative gains made in trade or business. ''Riba'' is mentioned and condemned in several different verses in the Qur'an3:130

/ Arts Council Award for "Client of the Year" 1999. Paoletti won first RIBA Client of the Year award in 1998, and was appointed a Commander of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(CBE) in the 2000 New Year Honours for "services to Architecture". The '' Architectural Review'' called him "the

Medici The House of Medici ( , ; ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first consolidated power in the Republic of Florence under Cosimo de' Medici and his grandson Lorenzo "the Magnificent" during the first half of the 15th ...

of London Transport". He died in London. He was survived by his wife, Nora. They had no children.

References

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Roland Paoletti dies
Building Design online, 18 November 2013 {{DEFAULTSORT:Paoletti, Roland 1931 births 2013 deaths 20th-century English architects English people of Italian descent British railway architects Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Transport design in London Alumni of the Manchester School of Architecture MTR Corporation People associated with transport in London People educated at Clongowes Wood College