Blee, Anthony

Anthony Blee (1935-2023) was a partner in the practice of the seminal British proponent of modernist/brutalist architecture, Sir Basil Spence. Blee joined the practice during the project to reconstruct Coventry Cathedral in 1956, and continued to run the practice after Spence’s death in 1976. He married Spence’s daughter, Gillian, in 1959, and they were the first couple to be married in the undercroft of the unfinished Coventry Cathedral.

He participated in the design of numerous university buildings including the grade-II*-listed Meeting House at Sussex University (1966), for which he was project architect, and which is highlighted below.

In 1993 he established Anthony Blee Consultancy and was recognised as one of the country’s pre-eminent experts on the integration of new buildings into the historic urban landscape.

Sources:
Journey into the Light: The Art Treasures of Coventry Cathedral by Joh Willis, Sarah Walford, Dianne Morris and Katherine Margaret Lee
Anthony Blee, 1935-2023, modernist architect and heritage consultant by Charles Thomson, RIBA Journal, 10 July 2023