The most enduring memorial to the architect Sandy Wilson is his new British Library, which opened in 1997 and occupied several decades of his life.

A controversial project beset by delays and overruns, the library soon became a much-loved landmark, its plaza and public spaces serving as meeting points. The reading rooms, with their high ceilings, airy balconies, soft lighting and crisp workstations, are appreciated by scholars from around the world for their atmosphere of unfusty contemplation.

Wilson was a distinguished member of that generation of architects who started their training before the war and carried forward the pioneering ideas of modern architecture from the Thirties, developing these and giving them wide application in the postwar building programmes of the Fifties.

In the case of Wilson and others it was the local authority offices that gave them this opportunity. In the Thirties ideas of the modern movement had found only small-scale practical application. The extensive building of schools and housing after the war was an opportunity for a wider introduction of new architectural thought, and helped to establish the modern movement as the chief method of building in this country.

It was from this kind of base that Wilson built up the architectural philosophy that he continued to develop and to demonstrate in buildings throughout his lifetime.

Colin Alexander St John Wilson was born in 1922, the younger son of the Right Rev Henry A. Wilson. He was educated at Felsted School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he read architecture in 1940-42. His training was interrupted by war service with the RNVR in 1942-46, and he completed his postgraduate course at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.

His architectural experience began in 1950 when, like William Howell, his predecessor as professor at Cambridge, he joined the newly formed housing division of the architect’s department of the London County Council as an architectural assistant. The pressing need for housing gave a realism to the work, and young architects could play a key role in designing important housing projects.

But it was not just a question of practical experience. Wilson had that cast of mind that caused him always to attempt to formulate what he was doing in terms of principles; he explored proportional systems; he was able to speak and write about his attitude to architecture with fluency and wit.

At this time he was contributing articles on architecture to The Observer, and his talent for developing what might be called an architectural philosophy received a broader scope in 1956 when he contributed, with another architect, a sculptor and an engineer, to the memorable This Is Tomorrow exhibition put on at the Whitechapel Art Gallery by Bryan Robertson.

It was then, too, that Sir Leslie Martin became the first Professor of Architecture in Cambridge, and Wilson migrated with him as an assistant lecturer in the University School. He played an important part in formulating the new courses, and his enthusiastic teaching in the first year made a lasting impression on his students. Though he was passionate on the subject of architecture, his range was wide. He was interested in history and always in those developments in literature, painting and sculpture, which he saw as counterparts of developments in architecture.

He began at this time to build up what was to become an important art collection, including the works of respected artists like Paolozzi and Sutherland, and later wrote of “the catch in the breath and the thumping heart of love-at-first-sight that signals the next (‘absolute must’) acquisition”.

While teaching in Cambridge he worked with Martin on several buildings in Oxford, Cambridge and Leicester. In Oxford, in 1962, he designed the Law Library in Longwall Street, a very fine design. In Leicester when Martin was consultant to the university, Wilson was involved with a number of departments, while in Cambridge his chief work was Harvey Court, a residential block for Gonville and Caius College, all between 1956 and 1969.

Yet it was his own house, and another for a friend next door, that made a piece of architecture as interesting as any of the others. This was a terrace and finished in 1964; partly because of his neighbour’s dislike of brick, he had it built in blocks of Welsh limestone and white cement with a plain facade on to the road, and opening on to gardens at the back. This was a material normally used for cheap buildings, but Wilson particularly liked it for the smooth surface of the blocks and light variations of colour, and so used them throughout an interior that is notable for its comprehension of space and immaculate detail. This house became the Wittgenstein Archive in Cambridge.

For Wilson it was also his drawing office when his own practice was expanding. Besides designing another house, for the painter Christopher Cornford, he was increasingly involved with a scheme to develop the Municipal Centre at Liverpool. Over several years this grew into an extensive project perhaps too large to be achieved under the changing economic conditions and a climate of opinion opposed to comprehensive developments.

In a similar manner the scheme for the British Library changed over the years. Initially, this was to remain the British Museum Library, but sited across Great Russell Street between Bloomsbury Square and Coptic Street. Apart from St George’s Church by Nicholas Hawksmoor (1730), the whole of this fascinating maze of atmospheric streets with its antiquarian book shops, old pubs, galleries and restaurants would have been demolished to make way for the new building; in fact, another example of the disastrous comprehensive redevelopment schemes to which public opposition finally put an end. With this plan most fortunately abandoned, another site was found for the Library between St Pancras Station and Somers Town.

This great project became Wilson’s life work. Building spanned 25 years by the time it was opened in November 1997, with two decades of planning before that. The reason for this, and the excessive costs, was the constant changes of mind on the part of the client, the Tory Government of the day, and hold-ups over instructions, during which the architect managed the considerable feat of retaining control of the design, despite vilification by, among others, the Prince of Wales.

Wilson suffered from the criticism: “As a result of being the architect of what has been called the great British disaster I have no work and my practice, the actual partnership, has now dissolved,” he said as the library opened its doors.

But the outcome was a red-brick masterpiece, where a reticent exterior conceals a truly magnificent entrance space, which leads directly to the different departments and has King George III’s private collection as its towering centrepiece. The asymmetrical form of the building harmonises with Sir George Gilbert Scott’s gothic masterpiece next door at St Pancras, while its monumental scale is made human by broken levels and natural materials.

Wilson was still committed to education. After Howell’s death he took up the chair in architecture at Cambridge in 1975. He was well equipped for the post. During his years in private practice he had continued to teach and lecture in Europe and the US, where he was a visiting critic at Yale and a Bemis Professor of Architecture at MIT.

He wrote two theoretical works, Architectural Reflections (1992) and The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture (1995), as well as The Artist at Work (1999), on the working methods of the painters William Coldstream and Michael Andrews.

Wilson’s interest in the arts was recognised by his appointment as a trustee of the Tate Gallery (1973-80) and of the National Gallery (1977-80). He was knighted in 1998.

His fine collection of modern British art, including key works by friends such as Peter Blake and R. B. Kitaj, as well as Patrick Caulfield and Richard Hamilton, was donated to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. His wife’s firm, Long & Kentish, worked with Wilson on a sensitive design to graft a modern wing on to the Queen Anne house, in order to display some 500 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures. When it opened in 2006, the gallery was hailed as one of the best British 20th-century collections in the country.

Wilson’s first marriage was dissolved. He later married M. J. Long, who had been a student of architecture at Yale and who later became a consultant in his own practice. He is survived by a son and a daughter.

Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson, architect, was born on March 14, 1922. He died on May 14, 2007, aged 85