A long time before we moved to Ireland, pre-kids and still running my Vectorworks consultancy I was called by an architect in the British Virgin Islands with the conversation going something along the lines of the following:
“I hear you know Vectorworks quite well, well I’ll email over my credit card details, we’ll give you a house and a car while you’re here and you can come and work for me for a bit and teach us some CAD at the same time”
Well, I thought it was a wind-up and said, sure, why not.
Well a few hours later the credit card details arrived and I was booked onto a flight to Tortola that week.
I worked with Roger Downing only a short while and on my return to the UK I found a young lad to head over to BVI in the same way (again he couldn’t believe it either).
It’s only looking back you realise how special that time was, Roger was a gifted architect and the projects he did were incredible (I’ve swiped one such example from his website below):
Well, I just heard today that Roger passed away last year and although my time working with Roger and BVI was brief, it really knocked me for six. And after reading the memorial booklet (which was truly moving and beautiful) I just want to be the best architect I can be.
The practice continues to be run by his son Thor & my thoughts are (very belatedly) with his family and friends.
To see the exceptional work the practice has done in BVI visit: