Moya, Jacko (John Hidalgo) (1920–1994)

US-born British architect. His modernist work, in partnership with others, includes housing developments, for example, Churchill Gardens, Pimlico, London (1956–92); and Oxbridge college buildings, such as Brasenose College, Oxford (1961). His Skylon (1951), an elegant, lightweight pointed structure suspended on balancing wires above the Thames, was the most visible landmark of the Festival of Britain in London.

Moya's practice developed its clearly Modern direction before less popular modernist styles such as English Brutalism or system building took hold, and so includes all the eclectic and playful elements of English modernism. He was awarded the CBE in 1966 and the practice won the RIBA Gold Medal in 1974.

Training Moya was born in Los Gatos, California, and studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London during World War II, graduating in 1943.

Housing In 1946, with his former fellow students Philip and Michael Powell, Moya won a competition for the redevelopment of Churchill Gardens, a bombed site in Pimlico, London, on a 500-m/550-yd stretch of the north bank of the Thames. It contained some 1,800 dwellings, 30 shops, public houses, a nursery school, and a library, in mostly nine-storey blocks set out to give all flats views of the river. The buildings were faced in traditional London yellow brick with lower blocks in modernist white render. Churchill Gardens were technically inventive with district heating from Battersea power station across the river.

Further housing developments followed, including Lamble Street (1953) in Gospel Oak, North London. This was conceived as a low-density two-storey scheme, despite the council client's desire for flats, and became popular with tenants exercising the right to buy.

Schools and colleges Mayfield Comprehensive School (1956) in Putney, South London, used cheaper conventional construction than the reigning system-building techniques. Brasenose College, Oxford, was built in 1961 with real stone and leadwork, showing that Modern buildings could blend into traditional areas, and the Cripps Building for St John's College, Cambridge, employed intimate courtyards. Further college buildings for both Oxford and Cambridge followed in the 1970s.