The unsung heroes of Abuja Master Plan – Thomas Abbot Todd
Last week we presented the biography of Abraam Krushkhov, Director of the Archisystems International who was also the Director of the International Planning Associates in the production of the Abuja Master Plan. One of the associate project directors of IPA in the production of the master plan was Thomas Abbott Todd. He was also the […]
FCT
Last week we presented the biography of Abraam Krushkhov, Director of the Archisystems International who was also the Director of the International Planning Associates in the production of the Abuja Master Plan. One of the associate project directors of IPA in the production of the master plan was Thomas Abbott Todd. He was also the Director of Wallace McHarg Roberts and Todd, one of the three consortiums that combined to form IPA.
Edward Gunts presented Todd’s biography in the Architects Newspaper of July 2018. Born in Connecticut and raised in the Philadelphia area, Todd was educated at Haverford College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in city planning, respectively. A licensed architect from 1963 to 1991 and professional planner starting in 1970, he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1980.
Todd’s professional career began with the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, led for many years by the noted planner, Edmund Bacon. After winning a fellowship that allowed him to travel in Europe for a year, Todd joined the University of Pennsylvania as a campus planner and designer; he then started a planning firm known as Grant & Todd, and then worked for Geddes, Brecher, Qualls & Cunningham.
In 1963, Wallace and McHarg hired him to work for Wallace-McHarg Associates, which was taking on land planning projects and other commissions around the country, including a much-publicised plan to control development in Baltimore County’s Green Spring Valley. After Todd and Bill Roberts became full partners, the firm was renamed Wallace, McHarg, Roberts & Todd. It was based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with additional offices in San Francisco, Miami, Lake Placid, and Dallas, the firm had over 200 employees at its peak.
Along with his other colleagues, Todd built a large firm that was known for its multidisciplinary approach to design, combining architecture, landscape architecture and planning. Among Todd’s best-known projects were the master plans for Baltimore’s Inner Harbour renewal area, the US Capitol area in Washington, DC and Abuja, the Capital City of Nigeria. In the IPA’s allotment of responsibilities for the Abuja project, Todd was responsible for the Site Evaluation, City Site Selection, Concept Planning, Urban Design, Master Planning and Community Services Planning.
He worked on landscape architecture projects for Battery Park in New York and was part of the design team behind Philadelphia’s Liberty Place towers, which broke the longstanding gentleman’s agreement that no structure could be taller than William Penn’s statue atop City Hall.
Working in a variety of idioms, Todd also designed smaller works, including three houses for his own family as well as urban sculpture. His 1982 McKeldin Fountain, also known as The Waterfall, was designed to be an explorable waterfall formed by a series of concrete prisms with water cascading down on all sides and collecting in pools below with platforms at different levels containing plants and walkways for people. Both a utilitarian part of the city’s infrastructure and a sophisticated work of Brutalist architecture, it was part of Baltimore’s official inventory of public art until it was demolished by the city in 2016.
Todd’s penchant for planning and his attention to detail extended to his leisure time activities, including model shipbuilding, music, and painting. After WRT’s master plan for Baltimore called for the USS Constellation to be the sculptural centrepiece of the Inner Harbor, Todd built a scale model of it, down to the miniature cannon balls on the upper deck. His model is on display at the U. S. Naval War College in Newport, R. I.
In 1991, Todd retired from WRT and moved to Rhode Island, where he continued to consult professionally. In 2008 he moved to Plymouth, Duxbury in Massachusetts. His colleague, Abraam Krushkhov only witnessed the commencement of the implementation of the Abuja Master plan, but died 11 years after, in 1990.
For Todd, however, he lived for the next 39 years after the submission of the Master Plan to FCDA in 1979. He not only lived to witness the implementation of their dream plan come true but, unlike Krushkhov, Todd outlived the December 1991 date the Federal Capital was effectively transferred from Lagos to Abuja. Thomas Abbott Todd died in Massachusetts on 14th June 2018. He is survived by three children, a sister and four grandchildren.