Col­in Laird — ar­chi­tect of Queen’s Hall, the Jean Pierre Com­plex and Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, and the Na­tion­al Li­brary — has died at 93.

Laird was born to mid­dle class par­ents in north­ern Eng­land in 1924. He might well have spent his life in Britain if not for his de­ci­sion to en­list in the navy on the eve of his 18th birth­day dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

He was sent to the British colony of Trinidad to train as a nav­i­ga­tor and met his fu­ture wife, Jeanette But­ler. They mar­ried in Port-of-Spain and Laird was soon or­dered back to Eng­land by mil­i­tary com­mand.

Af­ter the war, and a num­ber of near-miss­es in which two of his pi­lots were killed, the young ar­chi­tec­ture stu­dent com­plet­ed his stud­ies from a hos­pi­tal bed in Lon­don. He set to work with an ar­chi­tec­tur­al firm, re­build­ing the bombed-out city.

In 1950/51 he was award­ed the pres­ti­gious Soane Medal­lion by the Roy­al In­sti­tute of British Ar­chi­tects for his com­pe­ti­tion de­sign of an An­gli­can Church. He worked on the Fes­ti­val of Britain, a so­cial­ist town­scape on the banks of the Thames, but he and his wife soon de­cid­ed that they want­ed to re­turn to Trinidad with their two young chil­dren. They crossed the At­lantic with £50 in their pock­ets in 1952, which was all the British gov­ern­ment would per­mit them to leave with.

The ar­chi­tect’s pri­vate prac­tice in Trinidad gath­ered steam slow­ly in the 1950s, with ear­ly jobs in­clud­ing the Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed of­fice block in Clax­ton Bay and Bish­op’s High School in To­ba­go, but it was the de­sign of a Mul­ti-pur­pose Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre Con­cert Hall that re­al­ly launched his lo­cal rep­u­ta­tion.

The com­pe­ti­tion for the de­sign of what came to be known as Queen’s Hall, the coun­try’s fore­most per­for­mance space for decades, was open to all West In­di­an ar­chi­tects in 1957, and Laird won with his rad­i­cal de­sign of an in­vert­ed cate­nary roof. The sig­na­ture roof, two to four inch-thick con­crete re­in­forced by steel mesh was de­signed in con­junc­tion with en­gi­neer David Key. The hall was opened to the pub­lic in June 1959.

Mean­while, Laird was build­ing a rep­u­ta­tion as an ar­dent ad­vo­cate of West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion in pre-in­de­pen­dence Trinidad and To­ba­go. His fam­i­ly’s home at #9 St Clair Av­enue was fre­quent­ed, es­pe­cial­ly at Car­ni­val, by lead­ing West In­di­ans in­clud­ing au­thor Derek Wal­cott, artist Carlisle Chang, and dancer Beryl McBurnie.

Dur­ing the lean times of the late 60s and ear­ly 70s, Laird moved up the is­lands for work, de­sign­ing ho­tels and gov­ern­ment build­ings in Do­mini­ca, Grena­da and St Kitts. He sailed, so­lo, and of­ten did his site vis­its by boat. His so­cial­ist sym­pa­thies made him par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of pub­lic hous­ing de­signs done for Mau­rice Bish­op’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment in Grena­da.

In the late 1970s, the Er­ic Williams gov­ern­ment com­mis­sioned de­signs for a large sport­ing com­plex in Mu­cu­rapo, which Laird worked on with en­gi­neer and col­league, Sel­wyn Vi­dal. The Jean Pierre Com­plex was com­plet­ed in time for the World Net­ball Tour­na­ment, but Laird was soon protest­ing the ad­ver­tis­ing of al­co­hol and cig­a­rettes at the fa­cil­i­ty, stag­ing a suc­cess­ful vig­il out­side the com­plex gates.

For many years, Laird was as well known for his an­ti-death penal­ty ad­vo­ca­cy as he was for his de­sign, wag­ing an abo­li­tion­ist cam­paign that did not res­onate with the pub­lic at large. To the con­ster­na­tion of the ar­chi­tec­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty, he quit the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects over its ties to South Africa’s apartheid regime in 1973.

In the 1990s, he worked on the In­de­pen­dence Square Re­vi­tal­iza­tion Project, en­vi­sion­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of the length of the strip from a de­grad­ed park­ing lot to a “grassed swathe plant­ed in lo­cal for­est trees shad­ing an el­e­gant Cen­tral Prom­e­nade.”

He con­sid­ered the Na­tion­al Li­brary project in Port of Spain his mag­num opus, adopt­ing the prin­ci­ples of green ar­chi­tec­ture in­to en­er­gy — and wa­ter-ef­fi­cient de­sign, with rooftop gar­dens and a grey wa­ter sup­ply that tapped in­to the aquifer be­low the build­ing. The project took al­most ten years, un­der­go­ing a re-de­sign and en­large­ment with a change of gov­ern­ment.

Laird was a mod­ernist by train­ing, a great ad­mir­er of the Ger­man ar­chi­tects of the Bauhaus move­ment, but adapt­ed his de­signs to trop­i­cal con­di­tions and al­ways strove for nat­ur­al ven­ti­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in the pre-air con­di­tion era. He tried dili­gent­ly to in­cor­po­rate el­e­ments of lo­cal ar­chi­tec­ture in­to his de­signs, and his use of cor­ru­gat­ed Aluz­inc (gal­va­nize) has been hot­ly de­bat­ed.

Laird was ho­n­oured with the Cha­co­nia Gold medal in 2001, and was named one of the coun­try’s 50 Icons dur­ing 50th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions in 2013.

He was laid to rest in a pri­vate cer­e­mo­ny at the St James Cre­ma­to­ri­um on Sat­ur­day.