Dr Michael Forsyth (1951–2026)

Michael de Jong Forsyth was born on 26 November 1951 in Tyneside.¹ Raised on the Wirral, he attended Wallasey Grammar School where his musical talents flourished. A gifted violinist, he played in the Merseyside Youth Orchestra.² 

Forsyth entered LSA at the age of seventeen. His parallel devotion to architecture and music was evident from the outset: during the same week that he sat for his final architectural examinations, he achieved his performer's diploma in violin at Trinity College London.³ He graduated from Liverpool with a BA in 1973 and BArch in 1975.⁴ 

Before completing his professional qualifications, Forsyth spent time in practice in St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, under American architect John Randal McDonald, and in Gothenburg, Sweden (1972–73).⁵ In 1975 he was awarded the Rome Prize in Architecture and, immediately after his marriage to fellow architect Vera Papaxanthou on 20 September 1975, spent a year at the British School at Rome.⁶ 

In 1976 the Forsyths moved to Toronto, where Michael joined Arthur Erickson Architects and the Parkin Partnership. His background as a concert violinist informed his contributions to the design of the Roy Thomson Hall for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.⁷ It was while working on this project that Forsyth identified a significant gap in architectural historiography: the absence of a comprehensive history of concert halls as a building type.⁸ 

This observation inspired his doctoral research at the University of Bristol, where he was awarded a D.Phil. in 1984.⁹ The thesis was expanded into his seminal book, Buildings for Music: The Architect, the Musician, and the Listener from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day, published simultaneously by Cambridge University Press and MIT Press in 1985.¹⁰ The work examines the reciprocal relationship between musical taste and architectural form, tracing the evolution of purpose-built music rooms, opera houses, and concert halls from the seventeenth century onwards. It received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and was translated into Italian, French, Japanese, and German.¹¹ The book remains a standard reference in the field. 

Forsyth joined the University of Bristol as a lecturer in architecture in 1979, subsequently serving as a research fellow in drama (1984–90) and special lecturer in theatre architecture (1990–98).¹² During this period he published Auditoria: Designing for the Performing Arts (Mitchell, London and Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1987), a practical guide for designers and students illustrating solutions for single and dual-purpose performance halls.¹³ He broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on concert hall acoustics and contributed regularly to the Architects' Journal.¹⁴ 

Alongside his academic work, Forsyth maintained an architectural practice. He was a director of Forsyth Chartered Architects from 1979 to 2002 and served on the board of Plato Consortium Ltd from 1983 to 2002.¹⁵  

In 1998 Forsyth became Director of Studies for the postgraduate Master of Science degree course in the Conservation of Historic Buildings at the University of Bath, a position he held for twenty-five years, educating a generation of surveyors, engineers, and architects.¹⁷ He served on the selection board for the Rome Prize in Architecture from 1987 to 1993.¹⁸ 

Forsyth's contribution to his adopted city of Bath was consolidated by his authorship of the Pevsner Architectural Guide to Bath (Yale University Press, 2003), the first comprehensive architectural guide to the city.¹⁹ 

Between 2007 and 2008 Forsyth edited a trilogy of reference works on historic building conservation for Wiley-Blackwell: Understanding Historic Building Conservation (2007), Structures & Construction in Historic Building Conservation (2007), and Materials & Skills for Historic Building Conservation (2008). Each volume brought together contributions from leading architects, structural engineers, and conservation professionals.²⁰ His 2019 article on Bath's wartime ironwork removal and subsequent restoration in the Journal of Architectural Conservation exemplified his detailed archival approach to local architectural history.²¹ 

Forsyth lived his commitment to conservation by restoring and inhabiting significant historic properties in Bath. These included No. 26 Great Pulteney Street and, most notably, Oakwood (formerly Smallcombe Grove) on Bathwick Hill. In his later years Forsyth resided in William Thomas Beckford's library at Lansdown Crescent, where writer James Lees-Milne had previously lived.²³ 

Forsyth was Chair of the Friends of the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath (1995–2000), was a trustee of the Roman Baths Foundation, and member of the Chelsea Arts Club in London.²⁴