Thomas Eldred Bulley was born in the UK in 1937 and studied architecture at Regent’s Street Polytechnic London (now the University of Westminster), where he gained his RIBA Part 1 qualification. After several years working for architectural practices, Bulley applied to the Architectural Association in September 1969, as a mature student, taking the final two years of the AA Diploma course. As he later recalled: “1969 to 1971 were turbulent times to be a student, and the AA was in state of flux. I came into a hotbed of exciting ideas and radical debate straight from four years heavy-duty work experience. Given options I decided to maintain ‘workaday discipline’ for my first year and complete my technical submissions so that I could be free for my second year. Looking back this seems a hard-nosed strategy to have adopted as a student at the end of the swinging sixties; but I had worked hard at the day job as well as in evening classes and had taken levels of responsibility beyond my formal qualifications. If, as I could see likely, a hotel building boom came along I would have a head start... As things turned out the hotel building boom did come along but I didn’t cash in commercially. Instead, I opted out of the all of official diploma year units and into the Department of Development and Tropical Studies, and that (combined with events that were happening on the streets) set me onto a far more politically and socially committed course.” Thomas went on to work for Hackney Council’s Architect’s Dept. and was a campaigning figure within the Hackney Council Workers’ Joint Trade Union Cuts Committee. Records within the MayDay Rooms Archive also reveal his work within the New Architecture Movement (NAM) of the late 1970s, including a draft for a paper on unionisation in Hackney, written for the NAM 1978 Birmingham conference.

Sources

• Architectural Association Student Register, 1970-71. AA Archives
• New Architecture Movement Archives, MayDay Rooms Archive, London
• Tom Bulley Flickr page. Accessed 12th Jan., 2026: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomsgardenshed/4638792746/