(b Rochdale, 27 June 1927). British architect, active in Nigeria. She received her diploma in architecture from the Architectural Association School, London, in 1950. From 1955 she lived and worked in Nigeria, where she established a practice in Lagos with her husband, John Godwin (b London, 17 June 1928); it was amalgamated in 1989 with Tunde Kuye Associates to become Godwin Hopwood Kuye Architects, while a London practice, Godwin & Hopwood, was opened in 1987. Both firms provided a large number of multinational industrial clients with offices and factories in Nigeria, as well as building schools and housing, the latter primarily for multinational employees. Hopwood and Godwin developed the tradition established in Nigeria by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, disciples of Le Corbusier, in which Modernism is adapted to local conditions of climate and building technology. This heritage is clearly seen in the Christchurch Cathedral Primary School (c. 1960) in Lagos, a vast, horizontally orientated rectangular building of four storeys. The outer walls are organized into rectangular modules, each of which is subdivided into double rows of openings; these can be raised horizontally as sun shades, while also allowing ventilation. The housing projects for multinational industries (e.g. blocks of flats for Costain Nigeria, 1980–81, Lagos, and for Lewventis Ltd, 1981–3, Ikoyi, Lagos) are smaller in scale, while still modular in conception. In the latter, three storeys of rectangular units with flat walls alternate with broad balconies that project out from glass walls. Hopwood is a Fellow of the RIBA and in 1983 was the first woman to become a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects.

• Hopwood, Gillian
  • Nigeria, §IV, 2: Architecture: Modern influences